Bulletin

Issue: June 2006

News

Major role in dementia care

Some 200,000 Australians suffer from dementia. Estimated costs to the nation are $5.6 billion and rising. La Trobe University has a key role in three new initiatives to tackle a condition that looks set to overtake depression as Australia's major health issue by 2016.

La Trobe University is playing a major role in the Victorian and Tasmanian segments of an $8.36 million Federal Government plan to increase the skills of health professionals working with people who have dementia and their families. More than 7,500 health workers around Australia are expected to benefit from specialised tertiary dementia training and scholarships under the new scheme over the next three years.

Special Dementia Training Study Centres will enable health professionals to access dementia training and scholarships, with students having work placements involving dementia care.

Professor Rhonda Nay, Director of La Trobe's Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care and Head of the Gerontic Nursing Clinical School, will coordinate the Victoria and Tasmania segment of the scheme.

Associate Professor Susan Koch, codirector of the centre, will lead the nursing stream, one of five in the project. Professor Nay says the project aims to improve the experience of people living with dementia by providing the latest in research-based education for qualified and student nurses, as well as medical and allied health professionals.

It will bring together dementia experts from various disciplines to create innovative educational approaches and content. 'The collaboration will maximise the extent to which health professionals can draw on dementia expertise and research evidence in their daily practice and reduce duplication of effort. It will also provide the basis for much-needed interdisciplinary dementia research,' Professor Nay says.

The project's five streams deal with medical, nursing, allied health, community support and rural-regional issues.

Announcing the scheme in June, the Minister for Ageing, Senator Santo Santoro, said that by increasing the skills and knowledge of tertiary-trained health professionals, the lives of many of the estimated 200,000 Australians who have some form of dementia would be improved.

Each lead organisation, in partnership with other tertiary institutions, healthcare and service-industry providers, will establish a Dementia Training Study Centre covering one or more states or territories. They will develop and promote undergraduate and postgraduate dementia curricula and training resources, and offer a number of dementia-specific scholarships.

Other institutions in the Victoria- Tasmania collaboration include Monash University, the National Ageing Research Institute, University of Melbourne, University of Tasmania, the Victorian and Tasmanian divisions of Alzheimer's Australia, Bendigo Health, with support from Bundoora Extended Care Centre, St Vincent's Health and Bayside Health.