ABSTRACT
In this chapter, a plea is made for the establishment of a multidisciplinary ‘core curriculum’ for professionals working with persons with dementia. The need for such a programme arises not only out of the multiplicity of professionals coming into contact with persons with dementia and their families, but also from the often vague delineations between professional roles.
The lack of ‘profession-specific’ and ‘shared’ models and theories about dementia and care-giving impede progress in care-giving, and are a major focus of the core curriculum. Inadequacies in specific knowledge and surpervised practice relating to dementia within current nursing, social work and clinical psychology curricula are discussed within the context of five global problem areas: (1) limited educational resources, (2) specific problems within a profession, (3) interdisciplinary problems, (4) limited resources in practice and (5) difficulties in the dissemination of research.
The ‘core curriculum’ presented in this chapter comprises a sample curriculum based on a hierarchy of information, starting with normal aging processes and working through common physiological conditions treated in geriatric medicine, through to old-age psychiatry, and finally, specifically dementia. The curriculum also comprises a sample: interdisciplinary philosophy statement, specific interdisciplinary goals statement, a philosophy statement specific to a profession (the nursing example is used), nursing-care objectives derived from the nursing philosophy statement and, a nursing-management philosophy statement.
