The Memory Care Innovation Program is designed to recognize industry practitioners whose passion and innovation are shaping the future of cognitive care in the fields of behavioral health, home health, home nursing, hospice and palliative care, senior housing and skilled nursing. Learn about this year's inaugural Memory Care Innovation Awards winners here. https://innovation.memorycarebusiness.com/.
Jane Yousey, director of learning and development at FirstLight Home Care, has been selected as the 2024 Memory Care Innovation Award recipient.
To be a Memory Care Innovation Award recipient, candidates must be nominated by their peers. Candidates must be high-performing employees who know how to put their vision into action and can serve as advocates for people living with memory-related disorders and the dedicated professionals who ensure their well-being.
In an interview with Home Healthcare News, Eugie spoke about why people with dementia don't seek out earlier diagnosis and how to create treatments that don't currently exist.
What inspired you to pursue a career in memory care?
As a geriatric occupational therapist, I have enjoyed working with people whose brains are altered by dementia and mental illness throughout my career, and I have spent my career developing and training techniques, tools and techniques to help their caregivers to care for them better.
What is the biggest lesson you've learned since starting your memory care career?
I have to speak from personal experience first hand: My mother really struggled with several different forms of dementia for the last 10 years and passed away about a year and a half ago.
My grandmother lived with us through Alzheimer's, and the biggest lesson I learned is that when you care for someone with dementia, you also care for their family. Everyone needs support, understanding, and tools to navigate this journey.
Looking ahead to the future of memory care, if you could change one thing, what would it be?
We need to close the loop on preparing people to get diagnosed as soon as possible. The reason people don't get diagnosed is because there is no cure right now. There are some interesting infusions in development, but I think the No. 1 reason people don't want to get diagnosed is because it feels like a hopeless situation.
My biggest hope is to develop treatments that are effective in not just slowing but halting the progression, and to give people the peace of mind to receive an accurate diagnosis and begin treatment.
Secondly, the number of available community and institutional beds for people who need dementia care support will fill up. Over the next four to five years, there will be no more beds available.
We need to prepare people to have the comprehensive care they need at home, which is the best place to grow old surrounded by memories, photos, treasured objects, the garden, golf clubs, tool collections, teacup collections, the familiar habits and long-term procedural memories that come with home. We also need to prepare communities to be dementia-ready, so that waiters in coffee shops and restaurants know how best to support the independence of people with dementia for as long as possible.
What is the biggest obstacle to innovation in memory care, and how are you trying to overcome it?
First, there's the stigma. When you're diagnosed with dementia, people think all hope is lost, but that's not the case. My curriculum, my training, is a curriculum of hope.
Our company is called FirstLight, and we are often that first light of hope in the homes of people who may be on the road to dementia.
In our training program, we teach three things: Adjust communication depending on the stage of dementia Adjust activities throughout the day to help patients succeed The other thing we teach is environmental adaptation: people adapt to visual-spatial changes.
A perfect example is when you're preparing a meal for someone with late-stage dementia. Their world is actually only 14 to 18 inches from their face. If the glass of water, the salt and pepper, the cutlery, etc. are that far away from your facial recognition, your spatial world, then they don't exist. It's as if they're not there.
If you could look back at your first days in the industry and give yourself some advice, what would it be and why?
Create something that hasn't been created yet.