Enhancing post-diagnostic care in Australian memory clinics: Health professionals' insights into current practices, barriers and facilitators, and desirable support.

Introduction: Providing integrated and evidence-based support to individuals and families following a diagnosis of dementia is essential in order to optimise their quality of life and assist them to live well. Memory clinics provide multidisciplinary services specialising in the assessment and post-diagnostic treatment of people with dementia. This study sought to identify current practices, barriers and facilitators to provision of postdiagnostic support and to obtain health professionals' opinion of ideal post-diagnostic support to be offered in Australian memory clinics.

'There's something they can do': Educating aged care staff about the trajectory of dementia, palliative care and the Namaste Care™ program: A mixed methods study.

Objective: To evaluate outcomes of education about the dementia illness trajectory and Namaste Care™ program on aged care staff's knowledge, attitudes, self-perceived skills and competence.

Methods: A convergent mixed methods research design was adopted to compare the results of quantitative and qualitative data following an education intervention. Nurses and aged care staff (n = 35) undertook 2 × 2 h training sessions over 3 days.

Stimulating sense memories for people living with dementia using the Namaste Care programme: What works, how and why?

Background: Sensory-based program for people with advanced dementia aim to address unmet needs and to improve behaviours, mood or cognition. Pleasurable, involuntary sense memories stimulated by sensory-based program are difficult to evaluate because it is not possible to ask what people with dementia remember about their past, or what sense memories are being evoked. Notwithstanding the challenges in identifying what sense memories people with dementia experience, nurses and caregivers should recognise the potential value of sense memories for pleasure and happiness and provide optimum conditions to stimulate the senses.

Predicting Development of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in Frontotemporal Dementia.

Background: A proportion of patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) also develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Objective: We aimed to establish the risk of developing ALS in patients presenting with FTD and to identify the relevant clinical variables associated with progression from FTD to FTD-ALS.

Methods: Of 218 consecutive patients with FTD, 10.