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November is National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month & National Family Caregivers Month

In honor of National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month and National Family Caregivers Month this November, I am offering some helpful tips for the many men and women helping to care for and support their loved ones with Alzheimer’s Disease or another type of dementia. Below are the top five most effective tips for positive communication…

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New Online Training Available to Help Navigate Neurocognitive Disorders

As health care professionals, our role is to collaborate with older adults, to help them fill-in the gaps of their abilities and to help them succeed at doing what they want to do. Brush Development Company is offering a new 12-hour online, one-on-one private course that invites, encourages and challenges speech-language pathologists and other health…

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I Care Inspires Care Partners of People with Dementia

Fear, frustration and stress – Being a care partner of a loved one with dementia is physically and emotionally difficult, but help and support are available. I Care: A Handbook for Care Partners of People With Dementia, written by Jennifer Brush and Kerry Mills, provides caregivers a sense of hope and inspiration to make the…

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First long-term Care Community in Argentina to Complete Montessori Training

Congratulations to the staff at Fundacion Nuevo Hohar LeDor VaDor for enthusiastically completing their first Montessori for Dementia workshop. Approximately 35 staff members from a large Jewish home for the aged in Buenos Aires spent time in intense training with me in September. As I reflect on my time with the staff, I can’t help…

Join the Revolution! How Montessori for Aging and Dementia can Change Long-Term Care Culture by Bourgeois, Brush Elliot & Kelly

“The purpose of this article is to outline the findings of several systematic reviews of this literature, highlighting the areas of improvement needs, and to describe a new person-centered care model, DementiAbility Methods: The Montessori Way. This model focuses on the abilities, needs, interests, and strengths of the person and creating worthwhile and meaningful roles, routines, and activities for…

Reminiscence and Dementia

The power of reminiscence is a tool that should not be underestimated in dementia care. Long-term memory involves the retrieval process and permanent storage of an unlimited amount of information and the ability to retrieve this information again at another time.  One type of storage system is called non-declarative memory. Non-declarative memory begins to develop…

New Methods to Support Wayfinding for Persons with Dementia

New Methods to Support Wayfinding for Persons with Dementia

I recently served as Principle Investigator on a National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovative Research grant in partnership with the Center for Applied Research in Dementia. The purpose of our recent research was to develop and implement a signage system for long-term care that supports wayfinding for persons with dementia. Recognizing where one is…