Topic: "Communicating with Persons with Dementia"
Dr.Vani Rupela holds a PhD in Speech Pathology. She is an executive member and volunteer of the ARDSI, Hyderabad Deccan chapter. She has experience of several years working as Lecturer, Speech Pathologist at Sweekaar Rehabilitation Institute for Handicapped. She has also recently completed a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.
"All the participants could follow the instructions from the second exercise effectively. Through this exercise participants came to understand that action and words are most important in communication. Communication involves expression, tone, gestures, body language in addition to language. In verbal communication words constitute only 30% while the remaining 70 % is non-verbal communication (gestures, body language, etc). In Dementia patients’ common communication problems faced included name recall, finding correct words, sentence formation, understanding, reading, writing and slowness in speech, due to which the patient tends to withdraw from communicating with others. Consequently family members stop communicating with the person, wrongly assuming that he/she is not interested in a conversation. Gradually it leads to reduced interaction. The onus is on us to change and requires us to provide them the environment and support to communicate effectively. She also recommended that eye contact and familiar topics must be used while communicating with patient and to avoid speaking about the patient’s condition in their presence as their senses are functioning".
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