Hospitals in England and Wales are failing to deliver adequate care to patients with dementia, a study said on Friday.
The National Audit of Dementia -- the first of its kind -- said dementia sufferers, who are mostly elderly, were dealt with "in a largely impersonal manner" and staff often fail to take simple steps that would lessen their distress.
Staff do not always talk to patients during care, explain what they are doing, or offer enough help with basic tasks such as eating, according to the audit by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Sometimes they do not respond to patient requests for help.
People with dementia can become agitated, distressed or aggressive while in reaction to the hospital environment.
"We set this audit up to put dementia care in hospital in the spotlight," said health minister Paul Burstow.
"It has found some excellent practice, but it has revealed far too many hospitals failing to put in place dementia friendly care."
Only 43 percent of casenotes showed patients had been given a mental status test, the study found, despite 75 percent of hospitals saying they had a procedure for it.
Less than a third (32 percent) of staff felt they had sufficient training in dementia care, with more than half saying they had not been properly trained to deal with challenging behaviour.
Furthermore, 19 percent of patients' casenotes showed they were not asked about any continence needs and 24 percent made no reference to them being asked about pain.
"This shocking report proves once again that we urgently need a radical shake-up of hospital care," said Jeremy Hughes, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society.
"Given that people with dementia occupy a quarter of hospital beds and that many leave in worse health than when they were admitted, it is unacceptable that training in dementia care is not the norm."
The report recommended that all hospital staff receive basic dementia training, with more advanced training on some wards. Dementia champions should be appointed in each department and ward, it said.
Many hospitals have already started improving their practices in response to the interim findings which have already been passed on to them, the authors acknowledged.
The audit comes after figures published on Thursday showed emergency hospital admissions for people with dementia have increased by 12 percent in the last five years.
There are 850,000 dementia sufferers in the UK, according to the Alzheimer's Society. The charity says this will soar to 1.7 million by 2050 as Britain's population ages.
Copyright 2011 AFP European Edition
