Observing and talking about pain behaviours
An on-line resource for family members of persons with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias The dementia carers website has been developed for use with informal carers. It provides an online training resource for people who live with a person with dementia. It provides training in the use of pain assessment and is aimed to give the carer confidence in identifying pain. It was based upon the original web site developed by the University of Alberta, which has been updated and Anglicised for UK use. For more information click here.
Pain Assessment App for health care professionals supporting elderly people with dementia
The iPhone pain assessment APP has been developed as a result of the general failure of the BPS/BGS pain assessment guidelines to be taken on board widely. We decided to incorporate the guidelines into a format that would be user friendly and appealing to health care professionals. It is aimed at health care professionals who work with adults with dementia or other communication difficulties. Therefore we worked with the Computing and Mathematical Science department within the University who came up with this application. It has been trialled by staff within the South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) and we have received positive results of pain management improvements and user friendliness. We anticipate that the APP will be used with adults wherever communication is an issue. For a demonstration click here. There is also an android version which can be downloaded from here.
