Ditch dating apps but share the love: finding a match for people with dementia

It was wonderful spending the day with Irene and sharing our passion for football by watching our rival teams – Leicester City and Chelsea – play each other. We had so many laughs together.

Fiona and Irene really hit it off when they met up, after being brought together by an online matching service. But if this sounds like the makings of a great first date, the relationship is actually far more complex than you might expect.

They were partnered up by Side by Side, an innovative matching service that we at the Alzheimer’s Society are launching today, which is designed to connect volunteers to someone with dementia.

Side by Side is a completely new approach to volunteering. From joining a local club, going to football matches or just heading out for a stroll together in the park, the app pairs up people with dementia and volunteers with shared interests. A third of people with dementia lose friends after their diagnosis, and nearly two thirds who live on their own feel lonely. We know that one of the most important things for those affected is to remain part of their community and continue to do the things they love. By taking part in activities with the support of a volunteer with similar interests, they can continue with their hobbies – or even find new ones.

My team set up the service which was particularly important to me after seeing my granddad’s experiences with dementia. As his condition deteriorated, he became increasingly confused; he didn’t know whether he had just arrived at church or was leaving it. Although he had great relationships with all the people at his local church, they had limited resources to support him. The moment he had to stop doing something he had done his whole life broke his heart. If a service like Side by Side had been available, he wouldn’t have had to stop.

Side by Side has got off to a promising start. There are almost 2,000 people with dementia waiting to be paired up and we are urgently calling for more volunteers.

What makes this volunteer programme different is the flexibility. Side by Side is designed so that almost anyone can volunteer. It is flexible, so meeting up can be easily arranged around work and family, and a telephone service is also available for those with more limited time.

I was so convinced of the merits of the scheme that I decided to put my money where my mouth is. Despite having a busy lifestyle, doing a job I love and running around after three kids, I signed up as a volunteer. My Side by Side partner, who has Alzheimer’s, shares my healthcare background and love of gardening. I’d always wanted to learn how to grow my own vegetables and now that I’ve met Maggie,I know how to do this.

Maggie isn’t just a volunteering project; she’s a friend. Her daughter told me that it was the first time she has seen her mum smile in a long time.

Kathryn Smith is director of operations at Alzheimer’s Society. More information about volunteering for Side by Side or accessing the service can be found here.

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Ditch dating apps but share the love: finding a match for people with dementia

4 Things To Consider When Finding Chiropractors

With thousands of chiropractors in America, the service has shown itself to be invaluable for those seeking treatment for muscle and joint pain. If you suffer from discomfort that you think can be relieved by gentle spine and joint manipulation and alignment, you may be an ideal candidate for the chiropractor.

Here are some other things you should know when looking for the perfect practitioner.

Awareness: Chiropractors are certified practitioners who study for years, but they are not medical doctors. They specialize in treating disorders that don’t show up on x-rays, like sprains. Be sure to see a doctor rule out possible medical conditions that require more specialized treatment before booking an appointment with a chiropractor. It is crucial to first ensure that your pain isn’t being caused by a more serious injury or illness.

Expectations: A chiropractor will tailor his or her treatment plan to your needs. Chiropractors offer various treatments that may involve the use of heat, light, specialized adjusting treatments (with the spinal column and joints), ultrasound, electrotherapy, muscle testing and balancing. The treatment used will depend on your age, overall health and condition. There is no general time limit for a course of treatment, and while a friend may have received only a month’s worth of treatments, you may require more or less appointments. Speak to your doctor about what to expect.

Financing: Talk to your employer or insurance company about possible coverage, and if none exists, shop around for third-party insurance that may cover all or part of the services you want or need.

Ask questions: Don’t be afraid to ask your practitioner if you can see his or her license or certificate. Also, ask if you should expect any pain or discomfort during or after a procedure. Injuries and complications resulting from treatment are rare, but make sure you’re aware of the risks of any treatment plan before starting it.

Author Bio – Jane Smith is a fitness freak and loves playing with her two super-cute cats. She is passionate about healthy living, oral hygiene and visits chiropractic care centre often.

4 Things To Consider When Finding Chiropractors

Ed Patrick is a junior doctor who’s finding the funny side | Sarah Johnson

One of Ed Patrick’s biggest fears as a doctor is doing a rectal exam on a patient. It’s not just the process that fills him with dread – he gets anxious when he reads medical notes and there are signs, like if someone is passing blood, that the invasive procedure needs to be done. “It’s almost as if you’re about to ask someone on a date – you don’t know how they’re going to react. That’s part of the fear. It’s difficult to make eye contact. You try as much as possible but then you flit your eyes away at the last minute,” he says. As for the procedure itself, he adds: “It’s one of the most invasive things you can do. It’s funny that, in this day and age, we still do it.”

It’s this kind of “fish-out-of-water” situation that lends itself to comedy – a hobby that Patrick, 34, has devoted more time to since last August, when he decided to take a year out from pursuing a medical career after finishing his initial two-year training as a junior doctor. Alongside performing standup routines, he teaches medical students at Buckingham University and still practises medicine – he is signed up to two hospitals to fill in on shifts in A&E as a locum house doctor.

Related: Edinburgh festival 2016: comedy shows that should deliver

This month, Patrick’s routines are set to reach a wider audience as he performs a nightly show at the Edinburgh fringe festival. His routine is packed with funny anecdotes about his professional life: the emergency department, Patrick has discovered, can be a box of comedic gifts. He remembers introducing himself to an older patient in a bay in A&E. The man didn’t hear him, so he said his name again, and again. On the sixth repetition, he said, very loudly and clearly: “Hello. My. Name. Is. Dr. Patrick”. The patient sat back and said: “Do I want a taxi? No thanks.” It set the whole department laughing.

He also pokes fun at Jeremy Hunt’s mishandling of the junior doctors’ contract. He draws on the time the health secretary was reprimanded by the speaker of the House of Commons for fiddling with his phone. “He’s unable to negotiate with one of the most caring professions in society. These people are meant to be leading our country, they’re meant to be the best communicators. What is going on?”, he says.

Patrick also jokes about how his career choice has affected him, taught him things he didn’t know about himself and uncovered his neuroses. He talks about his first job as a junior doctor on the “high-stakes” paediatrics ward. “It’s a really terrifying experience. I was the new guy on the block and you’ve got all these highly trained, specialist nurses with lots of experience. Yet one week into the job you are technically top of the pecking order and have to make these decisions.” He compares starting out as a doctor to working in a supermarket where you don’t know where anything is and no one has told you. “You’ll have these situations where people will say, ‘Will you get this for me?’ You say, ‘Yeah!’. You come out of the room and you don’t know where it is so you have to ask someone to tell you. It’s this mini baptism of fire. That’s what led to comedy working for me. I’m able to explore those challenges and moments I’ve found difficult. Sometimes they are hilarious in their own right.”

Patrick has always had a love for comedy, but didn’t realise how funny he was until he did a speech at his brother’s wedding in 2002 and managed to make his sister-in-law’s German family laugh. A few years later he did a comedy course and then started to write. But being a doctor and a comedian means that he leads “the social life of a vampire, essentially”. His mother has started dropping hints about hoping she’s still young enough to look after grandchildren into conversation and so he includes funny dating stories in his routine.

Patrick has been reluctant to tell colleagues about his success on the comedy circuit, even though he was a finalist for this year’s Leicester Mercury comedian of the year award and consequently signed with talent agency Roar Global. And before his first show last August in Glasgow, he was nervous about whether people would warm to his routine, but it was a success. The “real test” came when he had a slot at London’s Comedy Store in December. “I was sat outside thinking, ‘have I made a massive mistake?’ I got up, did it and it was really good, to the point that they asked me back to do another slot,” he says. Since then, he hasn’t looked back.

So what does the future hold? Patrick’s thinking about carrying on with his medical training part time. People still ask him when he’s going to stop medicine or comedy and focus on one thing. For now, Patrick’s enjoying keeping up both. He says, “Why do we have to pigeonhole one? If you can make things work, why do you have to give one up?”

Ed Patrick will be performing from 4-28 August (not 15) at Just The Tonic: Community Project at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Advance tickets are £5

Ed Patrick is a junior doctor who’s finding the funny side | Sarah Johnson

Finding out a 2nd language in adulthood can slow brain ageing

The participants had been offered an intelligence check in 1947 at the age of eleven and have been retested in their early 70s, amongst 2008 and 2010. Of the participants, 262 explained they had been in a position to talk in at least one particular language other than English. Of people, 195 learned the second language ahead of the age of 18, while 65 learned the language after this age.

Researchers found that individuals who spoke two or far more languages had considerably far better cognitive talents in later existence, in contrast to what would be predicted from their overall performance in the tests at age eleven.

The strongest results had been noticed in basic intelligence and reading. Researchers said the results were existing in individuals who acquired their second language later in lifestyle, as well as early.

No unfavorable results of bilingualism have been observed in any group.

Dr Bak stated the improvements in cognitive improvement could not be explained by unique levels of intelligence.

He added: “These findings are of substantial sensible relevance. Millions of men and women close to the world get their 2nd language later on in lifestyle. Our examine exhibits that bilingualism, even when acquired in adulthood, might advantage the ageing brain.”

Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, a professor of medication at Harvard Medical College mentioned, “The epidemiological examine gives an essential 1st phase in comprehending the influence of learning a second language and the ageing brain.

This research paves the way for future causal scientific studies of bilingualism and cognitive decline prevention.”

Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age Uk which supported the investigation, said: “Over 1 million folks in the United kingdom aged 65 and more than are estimated to have some degree of cognitive impairment. We urgently need to realize what influences cognitive ageing so that we can give individuals far better tips about protecting their cognitive well being. This most current breakthrough is another stride forward in obtaining out how considering capabilities can be preserved in later on life.”

Finding out a 2nd language in adulthood can slow brain ageing

Finding out About American Medicine From A Poignant Portrait Of A Prolonged Island Jeep Dealership

The brilliant Ira Glass managed the impossible in the penultimate This American Existence episode of 2013 – humanizing automobile salespeople to the level the place you  begin to empathize with them, even if you carry on to dread (probably even more so) your next pay a visit to to a showroom.

Glass takes us by way of a month in the daily life of the Town and Country Jeep dealership in Levittown, Lengthy Island, introducing us to an eclectic group of males and a single female who are making an attempt to hit their target of 129 vehicles, and earn a handsome bonus from Chrysler.  There are person bonuses obtainable as nicely.  Glass explains how the technique performs:

“So there in fact is a place at Town &amp Nation in which they maintain score of who has sold what. It is in Freddie’s workplace, the common manager’s office. It’s a white board with every single person’s sales for the month to date on it.

Each vehicle or truck that they’ve offered is represented by a small magnetic rectangle that’s roughly the dimension of a nine volt battery. Everybody calls these chips. And the distinct colours of the chips stand for different designs of autos and trucks.

And all through the day, salesmen come and they hover about whiteboard, seeing in which everybody stands. And normally, everybody is shooting for at least 15 product sales a month. At 15 sales, your commission for the next month jumps from 20% to 30%.”

The easy availability of information has armed and empowered clients, which means that dealerships now anticipate generating less funds on every single transaction, and hope to make up the big difference in volume, even more ratcheting up the stress.

You listen to the experiences of the salespeople – the divorces, the missed possibilities to observe a son’s football game, the excess weight obtain, the rituals — and are overwhelmed by the extreme pressures of the work, and by the extent to which it evokes the poignant desperation of Death of Salesman, and the violent urgency of Glengarry Glen Ross.  The manager actually reminds his personnel to, “Always Be Closing,” and the contemporary equivalent of the magical Glengarry prospects look to be buyers drawn from the internet.  By any measure, it appears like a brutal way to make a living.

In the month or so because the episode aired, I’ve been struck by the unflattering parallels amongst the expertise of Glass’s automobile salespeople and the reports I’ve heard from physicians in a selection of practice settings.

I’ve heard from doctors employed by for-profit businesses that their productivity – in terms of patient encounters – is monitored employing a virtually identical communal chart to the one particular the Lengthy Island dealership employs to track Jeep revenue.  Companies are explicitly urged to increase their productivity, getting bonuses if they hit a pre-specified number of patient encounters, and warnings about their future job prospects if they fall quick.

I’ve heard from doctors at foremost academic health-related centers that their lives are more and more revolving close to RVUs, a billing metric (see this piece and this piece by Uwe Reinhardt, and this one particular by my Forbes colleague Dan Munro).  An academic surgeon tells me “every meeting we have is about RVU targets.”  Suppliers who fall brief of their target may be docked a portion of their salary, even though higher-executing companies may have an simpler time currently being promoted.

Perhaps some of the unhappiest physicians I’ve encountered (admittedly a very aggressive category) may possibly be individuals working at Kaiser, who complain that it feels more and more like “a patient mill” centered on throughput.  Most Kaiser physicians I know invoked some sort of factory analogy when describing their task – and they’re not thrilled by the comparison.

My takeaways:

1. The thought that medication is or will quickly be targeted on worth rather than volume looks, in the memorable words of Al Michaels, “totally farcical.”  Although there’s a great deal of lip services around a shift away from charge-for-support in policy circles, I know few doctors working in the trenches who received the memo.  As Dave Chase eloquently observed, sufferers proceed to be perceived as “a vessel for billing codes.”


2. It’s miserable to be a patient in this technique – present as an object to be efficiently processed –  and it is deeply dissatisfying, and typically ego-dystonic, to be a medical doctor.  Medicine is predicated on alignment with this patient, an affinity that looks rising challenged.  1 of Glass’s salesman invokes Sun Tzu’s The Artwork Of War (quite popular in some company circles), and describes his daily fight to take down clients.  This standpoint is intrinsically anathema to most doctors (at least at the begin of their careers), who are more inclined to invoke war analogies in the context of a shared battle against ailment.  Perhaps this helps clarify why so numerous doctors, and individuals who can afford it, are migrating towards concierge or subscription-based mostly practices (like OneMedical), producing (several would say even more exacerbating) a de facto two-tiered technique.


3. The doctor top quality in greatest economic demand seems to be speed – primarily a process metric.  Other measures of doctor top quality have turn into efficiently devalued, so extended as they don’t right away lead to a bad final result (no 1 would like a hack surgeon).  Doctors lament that the system does not care if you are really excellent any longer.  Some skeptics may possibly say there’s minor evidence that physicians typically regarded as “good” actually provide much better outcomes, so this devaluation is actually appropriate.  Other skeptics may possibly assert that the concept you can meaningfully and consistently hyperlink physician habits with outcomes far in the long term is a dubious premise, with a number of essential exceptions like checklists as a result, the idea of having to pay for value, and assigning worth to each supplier action, could be theoretically attractive, but generally divorced from our messy and uncertain reality.  Even now other individuals may possibly level out that it’s tough to really feel too sorry for medical professionals, since staff in most professions are scrambling for a paycheck, and U.S. physicians are paid comparatively properly (however some physicians retort that this seems to be much less rosy when you aspect in debt and time for coaching).


4. A couple of years ago, when technologists like Vinod Khosla appeared to recommend that a lot of a physician’s function could be carried out by algorithms and machines, freeing up physicians to do what they do very best, physicians have been skeptical, concerned that the essence of medicine would be threatened.  Today, medicine’s core appears imperiled even with no the algorithms, raising the question of no matter whether improved engineering could in fact aid physicians, in significantly the way Khosla proposed.


5. Healthcare entrepreneurs banking on the arrival of worth-based mostly care would do well to heed Steve Blank’s suggestions, and do some serious buyer development – i.e. “get out of the building” and figure out what the individuals you hope to sell to are really asking for – what is it they in fact want?


6. The core issue in medication stays reimbursement, and fee-for-support seems for the minute to have simply survived however another assault on its dominance.  As I’ve noted, the most most likely catalyst for change could be transitioning of staff to personal exchanges, coupled with a tethering of employer healthcare contributions to the buyer price index (CPI), as my Tech Tonics co-writer Lisa Suennen has explained.  This would quickly make personnel significantly far more price (and worth) sensitive, and produce the sort of industry circumstances most likely (or at least, much more likely) to motivate meaningful adjust.

Finding out About American Medicine From A Poignant Portrait Of A Prolonged Island Jeep Dealership