Primary care led services for people with dementia
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A pilot study to compare the results of assessments of dementia made by GPs and those made by a panel of specialists
IRAS ID
229344
Contact name
Richard Cheston
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of the West of England
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 28 days
Research summary
A new model of care has been developed in Bristol in which GPs are more involved in assessing older people who are experiencing problems with their memory. Sometimes this assessment leads on to a diagnosis of dementia. Alongside this change in Bristol, a new service has been created offering support to everyone who has received a diagnosis of dementia, the Bristol Dementia Wellbeing Service. Previously, people were referred automatically to a specialist for assessment.
We are carrying out an initial feasibility/pilot study to compare these two different types of service. Our aim is to test whether we have robust recruitment and other methodological procedures in place, including collecting data to enable appropriate power calculations to be carried out for a main trial. We are doing this before going onto carry out a larger study that will show whether the Bristol model of dementia care leads to improvements in assessment and support.We want to compare the diagnosis of dementia made by GPs compared to a diagnosis made by dementia specialists. While GP’s lead the diagnostic process, they continue to have the option of referring on people for a specialist assessment (e.g. where patients are younger, or have more complex presentations). Therefore, patients taking part in this study will be those that have been assessed by their GP - ones which were deemed to be more straightforward presentations.
Twenty participants whose memory has recently been assessed by a GP will be invited to undergo an additional assessment carried out by a specialist from the RICE memory clinic in Bath. A panel of three experts will be provided with this specialist assessment alongside other information (e.g. results from scans, blood tests and neurocognitive tests) to agree on a consensus diagnosis for each case.
REC name
HSC REC B
REC reference
17/NI/0137
Date of REC Opinion
14 Aug 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion