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Dementia Care

The Dementia Team cover all trust sites and offer services Monday - Friday between 9am-5pm. We can be reached via our contact details on the contact us page. Our service offers support and guidance during a patient’s time in hospital, we do not assess and diagnose people for dementia during their admission, this assessment would be completed in the community, within a Community Mental Health Team’s Memory Service. 

As a Dementia Team, we offer support to patient’s living with dementia during their admission to hospital. We recognise that attending hospital can be a distressing experience for people living with dementia and their families. We are striving as a team, to improve the individuals experience through better awareness, training and improved environments.

We support the Royal College of Nursing top 5 ingredients for supporting good dementia care, and use this as the template for our dementia strategy:

  • Staff who are skilled and have time to care
  • Partnership working with carers
  • Assessment and early identification of dementia
  • Care plans which are person centred and individualised
  • Environments which are dementia friendly

Forget Me Not

East Kent Hospital University Foundation Trust has adopted a Forget Me Not flower to identify patients with dementia, short term memory loss, confusion or delirium. 

The symbol is used to identify patients who have the following conditions:

  • Dementia
  • Short term memory loss
  • Confusion
  • Delirium (acute confusional state)

John's Campaign

East Kent Hospitals has signed up to a national campaign which advocates carers staying with their loved ones in hospital. 

John’s campaign was founded in November 2014 in honour of Dr John Gerrard, who was a doctor and a business man, and diagnosed with Alzheimer's in his mid-seventies. It was a slow decline, that sped up when he was ill or upset. Then, at the start of February 2014, he went into hospital.

The hospital had a norovirus outbreak which meant visitors weren’t allowed at all. He was there for five weeks. John died in November 2014. In the wake of his death, John’s daughter, Nicci Gerrard, cofounded John’s Campaign with Julia Jones, whose mother, June, also lived well with dementia (both Alzheimer’s and vascular) for many years before her death in 2018. John’s Campaign is June’s Campaign, is Everyone’s Campaign, for none of us should be blocked from our best, most special friends, family or carers.

Contact us

Contact a member of the Dementia Team if you are experiencing any difficulties visiting your loved one.

Jade Garlick
Lead Specialist Practitioner in Dementia Care
Phone: 07929 849625

Joy McCue
Senior Specialist Practitioner in Dementia Care
Phone: 07771 814076

Useful information

'This is me' is a simple leaflet for anyone receiving professional care who is living with dementia or experiencing delirium or other communication difficulties.  It helps health and social care professionals better understand who the person really is, which can help them deliver care that is tailored to the person's needs.



We are running an appeal to support dementia services across our hospitals!

With your help, East Kent Hospitals Charity wants to raise up to £500,000 to be spread across the five hospitals in East Kent, which will fund multiple projects to help support patients with dementia and make their time spent in hospital more enjoyable.

https://www.ekhcharity.org.uk/about-us/dementia-appeal/