'Shocking' Level Of Dementia Care Training

A "significant improvement" is needed in the way hospitals care for patients with dementia, according to a new report.

The National Audit of Dementia looked at 210 hospitals in England and Wales and surveyed 2,211 staff.

Just 32% of staff said they had sufficient training or learning in dementia care.

According to the Alzheimer's Society the number of patients with dementia in the UK is expected to increase from 750,000 to a million by 2021. Currently a quarter of all hospital beds are occupied by dementia sufferers.

The report makes several recommendations for improvements in treatment.

One of the authors, Dr Mike Crawford, told Sky News: "The first thing we need is for all staff working on general medical wards to get basic training in dementia and we think that each ward should have at least one member who's had a high level of training.

"We think that the people who run the hospitals also need to make sure that staff have the resources to manage and help people with dementia and need to make changes to the environment in which people are cared for so that they have things like familiar objects so they feel less scared of the environment in which they're in."

Dementia sufferer Mary Goulden was 84 when she spent nine weeks in hospital.

Her family say they were horrified by the way she was treated.

Her daughter Annette Lewis told Sky News: "The shocking thing was the lack of care she received in so many areas. She was left in excruciating pain.

"Her food was out of reach and left to go cold - there was no one there to help her. She was left on a commode for 45 minutes at a stretch.

"She would just be ignored because she couldn't articulate her pain."

Mary died in September and her family are now preparing for their first Christmas without her.

"We are constantly in tears because we feel that we let her down," her daughter Gill Anstiss said.

"She fought for us all our lives and she would make sure we got everything we needed but we couldn't do the same for her although we tried desperately because we were up against it."

Dr Peter Carter from the Royal College of Nursing said: "It's really quite shocking that most of the staff who are working with people with dementia have had no specialist training.

"It's about time the Government took this report along with many others before and insisted that there is action taken to address the issue."

Reacting to the report a spokesperson for the Department of Health said: "We want to see people with dementia only admitted when absolutely necessary and, when they are, receive high quality care in hospital.

"We will be financially rewarding hospitals that identify patients at risk and refer them for specialist care."