Welcome to The Dementia Podcast

Hello to you and welcome to the dementia podcast. My name is Colm Cunningham, and over the coming months, I'm going to be your host for these podcasts. In this introduction to our podcast, I will share with you a little bit about The Dementia Centre and the reason we hope you will tune in every fortnight to join me and your guests. Our podcasts aim to share our knowledge, the latest research and practice experience and that draws on over 25 years experience from HammondCare's Dementia Centre and our work. The Dementia Centre was established in 1995 with the opening of HammondCare's Meadows facility, a cottage model for dementia care here in Sydney, Australia. This was significant in advancing small domestic cottage models of care. So you will certainly expect that some of our content will be about the design of the environment here in Australia and internationally. We will always include show notes with links and downloads that may be helpful to you based on the discussion we've been having with our guests. In addition to our researchers and health practitioners from across Australia, and in our international team, we'll also be joined by guests from across the globe providing their advice and information. So what will we focus on? Well, we'll be talking and thinking about issues from every angle from the person with dementia, carers, clinical and care staff's perspective. It's important to draw on the latest evidence and practice experience and we will talk sometimes about issues of dementia that are challenging. Especially when we look at the organic progression of dementia and other complex dementia care needs. In episodes where we think the subject matter may be distressing or where we think having company to listen to it may be the right thing, we'll make sure we do that in the introduction to help you ensure that it's the right time to listen. We really want to unpack what the issues are both for people living at home in residential or nursing home or when people are in hospital, and what is the right support and the right care that people need at that time. At the Dementia Centre, we have authors and consultants who have dementia so our guests will of course include people with dementia and their families and friends. In those episodes be reassured our team have provided extra help and support in planning for that guest to ensure they get their message across. Over the coming months the podcast team will create a range of themes of issues that may be helpful to you from design the needs of people with palliative care in dementia, right through to the arts and health. Now my podcast team tell me I should tell you a little bit more about myself. I would happily talk on so many of the subjects we're going to cover, but it's gonna be fantastic to have guests that I can get their views and thoughts on such important issues. A little bit more about me well I lead a team of dementia researchers thought leaders and practitioners here in Australia and internationally, drawing from over 400 colleagues, nevermind the 5000 working across HammondCare, and our friends and experts from across the globe. I was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. So that's my baseline accent that you may be hearing. And I followed in my mother's footsteps training at the Ulster Hospital in Northern Ireland in general nursing before moving to London, where I worked as an ED nurse emergency room or accident and emergency as it's sometimes called. That's actually where I firstly started to understand the challenges that people with dementia face. Because ED is a very challenging experience for any of us but just think about it from a person with dementia perspective. I then went on to Liverpool in the UK I have to say that now because I live here in New South Wales, and there is a Liverpool just down the road from me in Sydney, in Liverpool, I lived in a "L'Arche" community and we'll link to that community for people with intellectual disability. And I learned a lot about what's important in supporting people in community. And then on to Edinburgh in Scotland. So that's the other accent that you're hearing, particularly here in Australia, where people hear that first and foremost. So you'll hear a blend of Northern Ireland and Scottish. But one thing I have had to change while I've lived in Australia is how I say my number eight, which beforehand with a strong Northland accent nobody could understand. I have a professorial role at the University of New South Wales and in normal circumstances I'm privileged get to meet so many people from across the globe and to learn from their innovation and practice experience. Over more recent times, my areas of focus have included behaviors and psychological symptoms dementia, the design of the built environment, and the needs of people who are palliative with dementia, who may experience terminal agitation, some of the many subjects that we will cover as we look at complex issues in later stage dementia. The Dementia Podcast team and I are really looking forward to having you as our guests. We'll aim to have a podcast every two weeks on a Thursday afternoon, Australian Eastern Standard Time. We'll also welcome your feedback and ideas about future podcasts so you can always email the team on hello@dementiacentre.com. Thank you for joining us on this introduction to The Dementia Podcast and I hope you will join us in our next episode. Bye for now.