Assessing dementia risk in general practice: a qualitative study of the attitudes and views of primary care health professionals

There are over 800,000 people in the United Kingdom (UK) with dementia. Dementia has a huge impact on people with the illness, their families and carers. Health care costs are about £26 billion. England recently introduced dementia “case finding” in the NHS. This is where general practitioners ask people who are at high risk of getting dementia whether they have symptoms of dementia. Some people will be recorded as being “at risk of dementia” because of other health problems like diabetes or strokes. This policy has been introduced with little testing. We do not know what people registered at general practices or GPs think about this, what impact there may be and whether there are any harms or benefits.

We are going to interview GPs, practice nurses and health care assistants about their views about case finding and assessing people’s risk of dementia. We will ask about use of computerised tools and including genetic information. We will tape the interviews and review them to see what is said and what issues come out.

We will combine our findings with another study being led by Newcastle on what people who have experienced “case finding” think about these developments. We will then summarise our findings and feed these back to the Department of Health, Public Health England and voluntary organisations working with older people. Our findings will help improve the way we diagnose dementia and the support we provide after the diagnosis is made.