Tagged / ADRC

ADRC presented latest results at two conferences in Germany

Jan Wiener, Ramona Grzeschik and Chris Hilton represented the Ageing & Dementia Research Centre (ADRC) at the 40th European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP) 27–31 August 2017 in Berlin and the 20th Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP) 3-6 September 2017 in Potsdam.

The ECVP is an annual meeting that brings together researchers from Psychology, Neurosciences, Optics, Computational Sciences and more. Besides vision, other modalities are represented as well as their interaction (multisensory perception). The conference of the ESCoP is being held once every two years. The society’s mission is “the furtherance of scientific enquiry within the field of Cognitive Psychology and related subjects, particularly with respect to collaboration and exchange of information between researchers in different European countries”.

Ramona represented the ADRC at both conferences with her ESRC-funded project on Dementia-friendly environments. In particular, she presented a poster with the latest results of her wayfinding experiment where she investigated the route learning abilities and eye movements of young and old participants.

At the ESCoP conference, Jan gave a talk on “What can eye-tracking tell us about the cognitive mechanisms underlying successful navigation?” where he introduced a couple of experiments that investigated eye movements during route and place learning in Virtual Environments.

Chris presented his results at the ESCoP as well. His poster titled “An exploration into the effects of ageing on general control of attention during route learning in a complex environment.” escribed his experiment using a natural looking virtual environment called “Virtual Tübingen”. He investigated attentional engagement during a route learning task in young and old participants.

Cancer and Nutrition NIHR Infrastructure Collaboration

Do you have an interest in people living with Cancer and Nutrition?

Then read more about the important activities of the Cancer and Nutrition NIHR infrastructure collaboration.

Since its establishment in 2014 the collaboration has sought to better enable a wide community of interested parties to bring together the high quality research being carried out in cancer together with the highquality research being carried out in nutrition, so that each can add value to the other in the interest of patients and the public.

There are 5 workstreams : Workstream 1: Patientsand Public,  Workstream 2: Professional Workforce – training and capacity building,  Workstream 3: Research – building an infrastructure and action plan to tackle the evidence gap, Workstream 4 characterising nutritional status in cancer – the Tookit, Workstream 5: commercial sector and industry,

Professor Jane Murphy from the Ageing and Dementia Research Centre (ADRC) leads ‘Workstream 2: Professional Workforce – training and capacity building’  and is a member of the Steering Committee.

The activities accomplished in Phase 2 are presented in the following report just published and more details about the collaboration can be found on the website.

Report Link
http://cancerandnutrition.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Cancer-Nutrition-Full-Report-FINAL_03-06-16.pdf

Website Link
http://cancerandnutrition.nihr.ac.uk/work-streams/

Please contact Jane:  jmurphy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you would like to know more or have any questions or queries.

Ageing and Dementia Research Centre (ADRC) at Royal College of Physicians – launch of Electronic workbook for Nutrition and Dementia care

Professor Jane Murphy, Joanne Holmes and Michelle Board supported by Michelle O’Brien hosted the launch of the online version of the workbook ‘Eating and Drinking Well: Supporting People Living with Dementia’ at the Royal College of Physicians, London on 27th June 2017.  Attended by leading stakeholders across health and social care,  charities including age UK, hospices,  WRVS and  housing organisations,  this impact event explore how good nutrition and hydration can be improved for people living with dementia.

The ADRC was delighted to welcome Professor Martin Green, Chief Executive of Care England  who gave an inspiring keynote speech concentrating on the importance of  nutrition to ensure dignity in care.  He was passionate about the need to raise the profile of good food and nutrition amongst politicians and policy makers to enhance and maintain quality of life for many older people receiving social care.  Other speakers included Jan Zietara, Head of Operational Delivery, Health Education England (South) who talked about current work and new developments to enhance the knowledge and skills of the health and social workforce with particular focus on initiatives for dementia education and training.   Finally, Kathy Wallis, Senior Programme Manager, Nutrition in Older People Programme, Wessex Academic Health Science Network highlighted the projects, resources and tools undertaken to address the growing concerns of malnutrition (undernutrition) in older people living in the community.

Helped by a lovely afternoon tea, there was active and lively discussion by all participants about how the workbook could help improve the delivery of nutritional care for people with dementia across a range of health and social care sectors.  All were very supportive of the training tools and left the event with lots of ideas and identified actions to put into place that would be followed up by the team!

The workbook stems from research funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing. The workbook is freely downloadable from the website:

http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/nutrition-dementia

It is designed to be used in conjunction with a training film, also available via the website.

Delivering DEALTS 2!

Training

 

 

 

 

Health Education England  (HEE) has commissioned Bournemouth University to deliver a new ‘‘Train the Trainers’ enhanced education programme called ‘Dementia Education and Learning Through Simulation’  2 (DEALTS 2). This builds on previous work undertaken in 2013/14 by HEE to ensure healthcare professionals understand and can deliver key competencies according to the Dementia Core Skills Education and Training Framework at TIER 2 (Skills for Health and Health Education England, 2015).

Prof Jane Murphy, Dr Michele Board, Dr Michelle Heward and Ashley Spriggs from the Ageing and Dementia Research Centre (ADRC) delivered the first pilot session in Oxford on 10th May 2017.  This interactive day was really well received and included attendance by Jan Zietara, Head of Operational Delivery, HEE; Jacqueline Fairburn-Platt, Associate Dean Quality Improvement, HEE Thames Valley as well as Dementia and Quality Improvement Leads.   Over the next 2 months another 12 sessions will be delivered to trainers across the HEE regions in England. The delivery of the programme will be evaluated as well as the roll-out across England by the trainers themselves to staff to understand the impact the education is having on practice for the delivery of dementia care.  In June the early evaluation work will be supported with the help of a Student Research Assistant, Laurie Emerson.  Laurie is currently a final year psychology student in Faculty Sci Tech.

Third Edition of the EU Falls Festival in Amsterdam (8-9 May 2017)

Student Engagement


Natalia Adamczewska and Yolanda Barrado-Martín represented the Psychology Department and Ageing & Dementia Research Centre (ADRC) at the Third Edition of the EU Falls Festival in Amsterdam on 8th and 9th May 2017. The theme of the congress was: Developing Collaborations across Professions and throughout Europe.

This festival brought together over 200 professionals from multiple disciplines (such as Nursing, Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Medicine, Psychology and Technology) working under a common target: The prevention of falls amongst older adults. It was a great opportunity to see how different countries in Europe, but also researchers in America, represented by Dr. Robin Lee, US Lead Home and Recreation Team; and Australia, represented by Kim Delbaere, Falls Balance and Injury Centre, NeuRa; are working under this objective, the resources different countries invest on this and the different approaches used from different disciplines. A variety of interventions were presented from educational to exercise, and a debate was organised regarding the relevance of the role of technologies to prevent falls and support research.

Falls are the first external cause of death amongst older adults which explains the importance of researchers, practitioners and policy makers working together.​ Members of the World Health Organisation and the European Commission were also attending this meeting and sharing their views on the relevance of falls prevention.

Yolanda’s PhD project looks into the acceptability and adherence of participants living with dementia to a Tai Chi exercise intervention. Adherence to falls interventions was one the main concerns of the congress, however, the experiences of those living with dementia remain mostly under-explored.

Natalia focuses on the psychological adjustment to falls in her PhD project and she looks at fall-related PTSD. Various interventions presented at the festival could possibly be applied in order to enable participants to cope with psychological consequences of falling, such as virtual reality treatment presented by Jeff Hausdorff that he originally developed for fall prevention in idiopathic fallers.