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This former journalist helps caregivers get to know who their patients once were, before dementia took hold (washingtonpost.com)

 

Three years ago, when Jay Newton-Small moved her father into a care facility in Sykesville, Md., she was given a 20-page questionnaire to fill out. Her father had Alzheimer’s disease, and his fading memory and agitated behavior made it hard for caregivers to understand his needs. But as Newton-Small leafed through the lengthy form, she had a hunch that it was not the best approach.

“I was like, ‘You’re never going to have time to read 20 pages on each patient,” said Newton-Small, a District resident who was a reporter for Time magazine. So, at the risk of the staff thinking she was “weird,” she offered to use her professional skills to write her father’s story for them — including the bit about how he was once a part-time driver for Winston Churchill and how he liked to amble around the cypress trees and lavender fields in the south of France, where he had a country home. 

“They loved it,” she recalled. Knowing personal details of her father’s life helped his caregivers understand trigger points that could upset him and references that might please him. “It completely transformed his care.”

The experience was so powerful that Newton-Small began compiling stories for others, first as a favor to friends and then as a start-up business that provides memory care facilities with online profiles that comprise personal anecdotes, photos, videos and recordings of favorite songs. This fall she left her reporting job to pursue it full time.

To read more of Tara Bahrampour's article, please click here.

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