Visitors from Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan

Well, today we had a really brilliant experience in The Memory Technology Library. We were visited by seventeen American students and their three group leaders, arranged through Maureen A. Mickus PhD, MSG Associate Professor with the Western Michigan University. Maureen and her group are travelling through Ireland for five days, visiting dementia focused sites and local tourist attractions. The travelling group were made up of students studying Occupational Therapy, Social Work, Business, Psychology, Nursing and Speech Therapy.  We were so pleased to welcome them all to our library and see their reactions to the technologies we have gathered to help those with memory difficulties live well at home, for longer.

During the visit, the group received a brief introduction to our exciting project, “The Five Steps to Living Well with Dementia”. We had a guided tour of the library, which included learning about the technologies we have gathered, how these might be used by people with memory difficulties and their carer’s, the pro’s and con’s of these and our user’s experiences to date. In chatting about dementia care, we shared experiences in relation to our education and health systems, how people access them and how this impacts on working health professionals. The students had a lot to offer through their questions and suggestions around sustainability and have given the team lots of food for thought! Each member of the group filled out a library questionnaire, leaving extremely valuable comments that will contribute to our research and shape how our library moves forward. Everyone left with a snack in their belly and leaflets on our project and the technologies they found interesting, useful or applicable to their client groups.

From the Five Steps to Living Well with Dementia Team, we would like to extend a huge thank you to Maureen and her students for their very welcome visit and all the positivity they brought to our project today. It is visits like these that we can all learn from (where the student becomes the teacher), great relationships are made and a real boost is felt within the team. Thank you very much J

Cáit, Occupational Therapist, Psychiatry of Old Age