Dementia (London, England)
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Primary care is ideally placed to recognise and manage dementia and yet dementia can be overlooked or misattributed by primary care practitioners and is underdiagnosed. This might be explained by a lack of formal training in the diagnosis of dementia combined with a reluctance to diagnose due to its associated stigma. ⋯ Data was analysed thematically and four themes emerged: Reframing dementia as cognitive decline (Individual level); triggers for the recognition of dementia (Practitioner level); engaging the whole primary care team (Practice level); the relationship between primary and secondary care (Service level). Findings are discussed in the context of their contribution to challenging attitudes to dementia in primary care and the positive aspects of person-centred primary care for dementia.
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Scotland's National Dementia Strategy calls for people with dementia and their carers to give voice to what they see as the priorities for dementia research. We sent questionnaires on dementia research priorities, locus and type of research, desired outcome measures and willingness to volunteer, to two groups of dementia research stakeholders: (1) people with dementia and their carers who may or may not be participating in research and (2) those who are directly participating in research. ⋯ The top four topics rated by importance were identical across all three groups of respondents: early detection (38.1%), drug trials (14.2%), studies on people living at home (9.7%) and study of carers (6.0%). The data can help shape the dementia research agenda, but more information needs to be made available to the public about other potential research areas.