I was intrigued this month to discover that the Butterfly Scheme now appeared on the syllabus of at least one national exam board, for various Health and Social Care qualifications. Wondering what was being asked about, I contacted the exam board and had a very helpful response, explaining that the Scheme was now so well-established in hospital dementia care that students needed to know what it was for and why it helped people – and, indeed, which people it helped, ie not just people living with dementia, but also their family carers and the team taking over that care in a hospital setting.
Bit by bit, things are changing. As I always say, they’re not changing quickly enough, but they really are changing. Our expectations need to be high; there really is no valid excuse nowadays for anyone living with dementia not receiving insightful dementia care in a hospital setting; it can be achieved and is indeed being achieved in so many hospitals – big, small, city-based, rural … where there is a will to deliver it, it can be delivered. Instead of feeling they’re asking too much, carers of people living with dementia should feel it’s absolutely wrong in this day and age that they should deliver their loved one into care which may place them in danger or cause them unnecessary distress. Appropriate hospital dementia care is no longer new or complicated; it’s proven to be deliverable, there’s loads of help available and I always maintain it costs less to get hospital dementia care right than it does to get it wrong. Think of those unnecessary extensions of length of stay! Here we are, short of hospital beds, yet so many people living with dementia end up stuck in hospital beds for far longer than they ought to be, simply because their care hasn’t been appropriate; this is the patient group with the most need to return to their own familiar surroundings and routine as quickly as possible, so why should it be that some hospitals can achieve that whilst others lag behind?
Let’s stop being tentative and cautious about demanding change! We’re all enormously grateful to the hospitals providing excellent dementia care and – in significant numbers – they have proven beyond any doubt that hospital dementia care is perfectly achievable and benefits patients, carers and hospital staff alike. If you’re happy with the hospital dementia care someone receives, it’s great if you can acknowledge it to the hospital involved – and if you’re not happy, you have every right – and I’d almost say duty – to ask questions, right at the top, both in that hospital and of your MP.
It’s time we stopped making excuses and did people living with dementia justice!