STOP Alzheimer’s Forum Spotlights Dementia Caregiving
| May 9, 2018 | Caregiver training and knowing when to seek outside help can improve the care that one provides a loved one while also lightening the burden on a caregiver.
Several dozen people gathered in the Jo Ellen Ford auditorium April 23 at the UAMS Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging to hear speakers at the STOP Alzheimer’s Forum who drove that message home. One of those was a caregiver herself.
Evelyn Garrison spoke at the forum about her experience as a caregiver for her husband who has Alzheimer’s disease.
Evelyn Garrison of Hot Springs, a caregiver for her husband, was lying in a hospital bed with an arterial blockage near her heart when she realized she needed help from someone else to care for her husband who has Alzheimer’s disease. Her training in dementia care through the Schmieding Home Caregiver Training Program may have helped her have that moment of clarity. Once she recovered sufficiently, she sought a permanent residential care facility for her husband and eventually found the right place.
“What I want to tell everybody is if you are a caregiver or know someone who is, don’t wait too long to get help,” Garrison said. “Don’t wait until you’re in a hospital bed to realize you need to do something. Go to as many of these caregiver workshops and support groups as you can. Do everything you can to educate yourself so you can help your loved one.”
Garrison participated in several Schmieding Home Caregiver Training Program workshops, including more than one on dementia care.
The Strategies Toward Overcoming and Preventing (STOP) Alzheimer’s Fund is a program to increase awareness about the disease and support Alzheimer’s disease research at the institute. At UAMS the forums were initiated in 2015 at UAMS by Sue Griffin, Ph.D., as part of the national STOP Alzheimer’s Now campaign to raise awareness of the disease and of dementia. Several forums have been held at the Reynolds Institute since 2015.
The audience also heard from Jeanne Wei, M.D., Ph.D., executive director of the institute, who moderated the forum, and Sue Griffin, Ph.D., professor and vice chairman for research in the Donald W. Reynolds Department of Geriatrics in the UAMS College of Medicine.
Phil Schmidt talked at the forum about why he started a business providing caregiving and praised the training the Schmieding Home Caregiver Training Program offers.
Griffin, an internationally known Alzheimer’s researcher, told the audience about the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and gave a basic, scientific overview of it that included images from an original case investigated by Alois Alzheimer, the namesake German psychiatrist who first diagnosed the disease.
Obesity, type 2 diabetes, a lack of exercise and genetic history are risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease, Griffin explained. She also outlined preventive actions people can take to reduce risk.
Robin McAtee, Ph.D., R.N., associate director of the UAMS Centers on Aging, spoke about caregiving and the Schmieding program. At eight training sites around Arkansas, the Schmieding Home Caregiver Training Program provides education and skills training to family members and paid caregivers caring for older adults living in their homes, allowing older adults to have the choice to stay in their homes.
With more than 5,000 graduates overall since 2009, the Schmieding program has trained more than 700 long-term care workers as part of a national certified dementia practitioner course and recently added to its curriculum dementia training for first responders — paramedics, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and even Red Cross volunteers.
Phil Schmidt, who is a member of the Reynolds Institute’s Community Advisory Board, explained to the forum audience how several years ago he was trying to manage the care of some aging family members in south Arkansas while living and working in Chicago.
That challenge ultimately led to him establishing Homeality, a business providing home caregiving. Schmidt had almost 30 years of experience in another business sector before he did, but what he learned about home caregiving surprised him.
“I thought we would be taking care of people with broken hips and things like that,” Schmidt said. “I never dreamed that 66 percent of my business would be Alzheimer’s or dementia-related care.”
He said he once offered to hire all 10 of the graduates of a Schmieding workshop because the need for trained caregivers is so great.
“The best part about the Schmieding program is the caregivers understand the subjective things out there,” Schmidt said. “The course helps the caregiver prepare for the gray areas — how to conduct themselves professionally in someone’s home and do the daily things that mean so much, how to build a relationships between the caregiver and the families.”