For Clinicians

Demand for access to high-quality dementia care for people living in the community will rise exponentially over the coming decade. The National Framework for Action on Dementia identifies the importance of care across the trajectory of the illness and across all health care settings.

Some helpful resources for clinicians are listed below:

• Information for General Practitioners (by DCRC-ABC)
  • • 14  Essentials for good dementia care in GP (PDF, 265KB)
    • Dementia Risk Reduction: A practical Guide for General Practitioners (PDF, 272KB)
• Why is it important to make diagnosis early?  (PDF, 124KB)
• Cognitive Assessment Tools
  • • Mini Mental State Examinination (MMSE) (PDF, 8KB)
    • General Practitioner Assessment of Cognitition (GPCOG)
    • The Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale - Cognition (ADAS-Cog) (PDF, 5.88MB)
    • Mini-Cog (PDF, 88KB)
    • Short Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (IQCODE) (PDF, 64KB)
• Alzheimer's Association and the American College of Physicians Foundation have produced a three program series of videos that demonstrate assessment for possible cognitive impairment during a primary care visit and disclosure of an Alzheimer's disease diagnosis.
  • • Assessing cognition and recommending follow up
    • Disclosing an Alzheimer's diagnosis
    • Peer to peer discussion of important aspects of assessing cognition or disclosing Alzheimer's disease during primary care visits
• Guidelines for Dementia Assessment (PDF, 44KB)
• Culturally And Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Guidelines (PDF, 292KB)
• Booklet promoting timely dementia diagnosis: Quality Dementia Care: No time like the present: the importance of a timely dementia diagnosis (PDF, 1.14MB)
• A reversible change in mood that can affect cognitive functioning to varying degrees, but it can be so severe as to be confused with dementia symptoms. Dementia can be assessed using Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia (CSDD; PDF, 80KB) or Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS; PDF, 32KB)
• A reversible but dramatic rapid change in cognitive functioning shown in Delirium can be assessed using Confusion Assessment Method (CAM; PDF, 48KB) questionnaire
• Frontotemporal assessment
  • • Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB; PDF, 104KB)
    • Frontal Behavioural Inventory (FBI; PDF, 112KB)
    • Frontotemporal Behaviour Scale (FBS; PDF, 176)

(Resource: Alzheimer's Association)