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In many safety-critical environments, including healthcare, operators need to remember to perform a deferred task, which requires prospective memory. Laboratory experiments suggest that extended prospective memory retention intervals, and interruptions in those retention intervals, could impair prospective memory performance. The aim of this study, published in Human Factors journal, was to examine the effects of interruptions and retention interval on prospective memory for deferred tasks in simulated air traffic control. This can be translated into a healthcare environment.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) offers advice and templates on how to write a statement if your employer asks for one. What can I learn? Tips from the statement checking team Statements in different contexts Statement templates Where to find further information

This report examines waiting times, access to assessments, treatment, and post-diagnostic support for people with dementia in memory assessment services. This is drawn from data collection carried out in Memory Assessment services at the end of 2023, relating to patients who had appointments for assessment from the beginning of the year, plus information about how the service is provided. The results indicate that there is still a great deal of variation between services in key results such as average waiting time for patients, the proportion of patients diagnosed with dementia, and the provision of post diagnostic support and therapy. Key findings Report recommendations Memory Assessment Services should ensure provision and consistent recording of high-quality memory assessment, including brief assessment of: eyesight and hearing, alcohol consumption and falls. They should offer post-diagnostic follow up and support through provision or facilitated access to a dementia advisor, Cognitive Stimulation Therapy, carer psychoeducation courses, and medication review as required. Trusts should ensure monitoring at an appropriate senior level of the recommendations set out in the Dementia Care Pathway Implementation Guidance and work together within regions, involving people with lived experience and their carers, to identify barriers to access, including demographic factors and deprivation. Integrated Care Boards should review results of their services with reference to responsibilities to meet the recommendations set out in the Dementia Care Pathway Implementation Guidance, including: Commissioning to meet current and anticipated need. Recommended waiting times in line with the Guidance. Criteria to ensure equitable access to services. Diagnostic criteria and components of routine in-clinic assessment, as set out in the Guidance. Equitable access to post diagnostic support, including standard provision of Cognitive Stimulation Therapy to people diagnosed as living with mild to moderate dementia. NHS England/ Dementia Evidence Toolkit. NHS England, at national and regional levels, should support Integrated Care Boards and Trusts to work jointly to address variations highlighted by the audit data in access to and provision within memory assessment services, with the expectation that in all parts of the country people using services receive equitable provision, including: appropriate referral and assessment, including appropriate use of neuroimaging, timely diagnosis within recommended timeframes, access to evidence-based treatment (e.g. Cognitive Stimulation Therapy), post-diagnostic support and follow up, as recommended in the NICE guideline. This work should be informed by the Dementia Care Pathway Implementation Guidance and the Memory Services National Accreditation Programme Standards for Accreditation.

In this article, Rachel Star Withers shares her account of receiving electroconvulsive therapy to treat her severe depression and schizophrenia while in her final year at college. She describes how the treatment robbed her of her memory, reading and writing abilities, but saved her life. Without ECT, Rachel believe she would have committed suicide. She talks about the need to educate people about the realities of ECT and undo unhelpful 'horror-story' stereotypes.

Next Steps is a tool created by the Dementia Change Action Network to help patients find the right support, at the right time, while waiting for their memory assessment appointment. Some patients are facing longer waits as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it can be an uncertain time. Next Steps provides information about what to expect from the memory assessment process and about organisations who can help. The Next Steps tool contains information on: what to expect from the memory assessment process taking care of your well-being available support what if I am diagnosed with a form of dementia?