Dementia patients have various caregiving needs, which can be serious sources of stress for their families. The increasing numbers of dementia patients and their families mean that new interventions are required to help families provide these complex caregiving needs. Facilitators of dementia-family support programs struggle to provide various…

The need to attend to terminally ill persons and provide improved quality of living and dying should be a national priority in Canada. Hospice palliative care (HPC), a person-centered approach that addresses the needs of the whole person, improves the quality of living and dying of persons facing a life-threatening illness. To ensure Canadians are…

To effectively address medication adherence and improve cardiovascular health among older adults, a deeper understanding is needed of the barriers that this age group faces and of approaches that would be most effective and feasible for improving adherence. We conducted a focus group study (n = 25) in a diverse population of older adults with…

This study examined physicians' attitude, involvement, and perceived barriers with the health care proxy. A cross sectional, correlational design was used to survey practicing physicians (N = 70). Physicians had positive attitudes toward the health care proxy and indicated that the most significant barriers to health care proxy completion were…

Educating and training the dementia workforce is a global challenge, given the expected increasing number of people living with dementia across the world as the population ages. Two projects from the UK (one regionally and one locality based) investigated courses available to the workforce and mapped the content of identified courses against a…

The composition and needs of culturally diverse older populations should encourage hospitals to address the conflicting demands for access and delivery of ethnically sensitive services. Health communication that is patient-centered and provides culturally and linguistically appropriate care has the potential to reduce racial and ethnic health…

The majority of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are undergoing maintenance hemodialysis. Hemodialysis is a process of removing metabolic waste, other poisons, and excess fluids from the blood and replacing essential blood constituents through a dialysis machine. With hemodialysis causing stress not only to physical status but also to…

Geriatric nursing is a physically and emotionally demanding job in healthcare. It is a neglected field despite the growing population of the elderly, and the experiences of geriatric nurses are one of the unrecognized aspects of this field. This qualitative study purports to explore the successes and struggles of the lived experiences of a select…

Aging is a complex process that involves factors such as cultural, ethnic, and gender differences and is unique to each individual. Love, sexual intimacy, and sexuality are characteristics that help define individuals and often contribute to how well they will continue to live and age. Enhanced knowledge and healthy attitudes about sexual needs…

Older adults often get lost in the process of assessment, diagnosis and service brokering. If our concern as care providers is to enable older persons to remain independent or in the community for as long as possible, we must tap into their personal values, cultural identity and health beliefs in order to foster enhanced health care communication.…

Caring for patients with dementia is complex and demanding. Since family physicians (FPs) provide much of this care, we examined their practices, learning needs, and barriers to care concerning Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. We surveyed 392 (approximately 50%) Nova Scotia FPs and conducted focus groups and interviews with: FPs; staff of…