At Julian Hospital Norwich

Alex Kemp, Senior Occupational Therapist, gives his experience of using Ad-Memoire with patients at the Julian Hospital in Norwich.

As a Senior Occupational Therapist at Julian Hospital, I work with patients living with dementia and complexities in later life. Patients are referred here for an assessment because of challenging behaviour as well as self-neglect and it is our role to support decision making around their appropriate discharge destination. We see patients with varying levels of cognitive impairment, including those living at mild to advanced stages of dementia. Also patients that are living with Parkinson’s disease that impacts on memory and behaviours.

We use Ad-Memoire one-to-one with our patients and have found that it helps us to assess their ability by witnessing how they communicate, focus and see the world. We’re always trying to find things that can be used by people who have lower levels of communicative ability and reminiscence tools such as this can allow us to read their body language.

Our patients engage well with Ad-Memoire because it’s pictorial and in bite-sized chunks that hold their attention. Being able to use different interfaces also helps our patients use Ad-Memoire in whatever way that works for them – a tablet, if they are comfortable with that, or a TV screen if they find that easier.

There are some of the adverts that I don’t recognise, which gives patients the ability to share something with me. At a time when we are there to remind patients that they aren’t managing their short-term memory, it is nice to accompany that with an opportunity for them to exercise their long-term memory and teach us something – we are helping them and they are helping us with something too. The fact that Ad-Memoire is constantly updated regularly allows us to use it each week. I like the ‘Holidays’ and the ‘Motoring’ reels, and the food adverts are the ones patients seem to remember the most. I think anything related to work or DIY could be important additions to the resource.