A new study aiming to improve the quality of life for dementia patients and their caretakers is looking for participants in Iowa. The goal is to create a detailed snapshot of dementia care in the U.S.
Researchers want to cultivate more cohesive care using a web-based model for dementia care, providing some of the families enrolled in the study with access to online education and remote monitoring of dementia patients. Navigators will also regularly check in with caregivers to determine if current strategies are working.
"We're basically training care team navigators as people who have not been to nursing school, who haven't been to medical school, but we can train them very deeply in terms of their knowledge of dementia so that they can essential function as a para-nurse for dementia," says Dr. Steve Bonasera, who specializes in geriatrics at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. "Some of our navigators have spent two and three weeks sort of trying different solutions to address specific problems until we finally kind of iterate onto a solution that everyone can live with and that works."
In addition to Iowa, the study is also recruiting from Nebraska and California. The goal is to include people from all social, economic, geographic and racial populations.
