Foget me not stickers for hospitals

Forget-me-not stickers idea to help boost hospital’s care of dementia sufferers and their families

2012 in News                    

Dawn Parkes, project leader, and Danielle Woods, dementia project manager, with the memories tree at BRI

A ‘sticker’ scheme to give high-quality care to dementia patients is being introduced across Bradford Teaching Hospitals.
A forget-me-knot flower sticker put in patients case notes and above their beds will mean patients with the condition are easily identified.
Head of nursing for medicine Dawn Parkes, said the scheme will help make Bradford Teaching Hospitals a centre of excellence for dementia.
“The forget-me-knot scheme is another example of our drive to improve our continuing care, treatment and support for this vulnerable patient group,” she said.

“We hope it will also reassure their families and carers that we are doing everything we can to ease the burden of this terrible disease and the upset that hospital stays might cause for their loved ones.”
To celebrate the start of the scheme, a Christmas tree where people can leave memories and thoughts has been placed in the main entrance of the Bradford Royal Infirmary.
Dementia project manager, Dani Woods, said: “We have been asking patients, visitors, relatives and staff to write the names of loved ones that they wish to remember this Christmas, or a statement around the positive care they or relatives have received, on a name-tag to hang on our Christmas tree.

“The tree and its memories tags have been receiving so much attention that we have decided that once it is taken down, the luggage labels will be adapted into a piece of art work which will be displayed within the hospital.”

Another initiative being used to help dementia patients settle into the BRI’s elderly care wards are special memory boxes above the beds of wards 23 and 29 which helps improve staff’s ability to interact with patients. The memory boxes contain items such as old photographs from all eras, local history books, skipping ropes, spinning tops, wooden pegs, seaside postcards or anything that can help them access their long-term memory as it is often short-term memory that is impaired in dementia.
“Hospitals can be very unsettling places for patients with dementia, so our work centres around helping patients and staff connect through something that is embedded in memories. It also gives relatives the chance to have that kind of interaction with their loved ones too” said Miss Woods.
The Forget-me-knot scheme and the Foundation Trust’s