Swedish Clinical Professionals' Perspectives on Evaluating Cognitive and Communicative Function in Dementia

Area of Science:

• Neurology
• Gerontology
• Healthcare Management

Background:

• Dementia diagnosis relies on assessing cognitive and communicative abilities.
• Swedish clinical professionals' experiences with diagnostic pathways are not well-documented.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate Swedish clinical professionals' experiences with dementia diagnostic pathways.
• To identify barriers and facilitators in assessing cognitive and communicative abilities.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative Content Analysis of interviews with interdisciplinary teams.
• Interviews conducted with Memory Clinic teams, General Practitioners, and Speech Language Pathologists.

Main Results:

• Perceived barriers include time constraints and clinical collaboration challenges.
• External factors like physical proximity significantly influence diagnostic processes.
• Communication impairment is not prioritized, and professional perspectives on integrating information vary.

Conclusions:

• No single "gold standard" diagnostic process exists in practice, despite clinical guidelines.
• Service reorganizations hindering cross-disciplinary contact negatively impact dementia diagnostics.
• Optimizing interprofessional collaboration requires enhanced communication channels and explicit consideration of clinical insights.