Nathan was introduced to several palliative care and dementia care researchers by Prof Wendy Moyle, from Griffith University in Sydney, who invited him to discuss his research on the uncertainties of dementia and end of life care. They will also hear about his current research on developing new ways to support the carers of dementia sufferers.
I will present the work I have done on developing heuristics for practitioners caring for people with dementia, to aid in their decision making processes.” - Nathan Davies
Nathan will discuss how practitioners can best support family carers in relation to his School funded project that explores the support needs of family carers. This project will also develop a prototype website to support them towards the end of life of the person with dementia.
Nathan hopes to find out how research conducted in the UK can be used within the Australian health and social care systems. Similar work on internet interventions for family carers is being conducted at the University of Sydney and he is particularly excited about this link. The opportunities he has to visit universities producing world class research and to learn from their teams will be extremely beneficial. “I hope to be able to visit some nursing homes to gain a better understanding of care for older people in Australia, exploring how the UK can learn from Australia.”
In Sydney, Nathan will visit the University of Technology, the University of Sydney and Griffith University. “As part of the visit I will visit a nursing home, give a talk to the Brain and Behaviour research group and also a workshop to the groups PhD students on qualitative research methods highlighting its value within a mixed method approach.”
“On the way to Australia I am stopping in Hong Kong for 3 nights to visit Prof Chien and Prof Lai at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. I will learn about their work on mindfulness for family carers of people with dementia (I am a co-applicant on this project) and will present my work on dementia end of life care – again heuristics and SPCR work.”
We look forward to reading a blog about his trip when he returns in April.