| 214 Implications and future directions This thesis offers several implications and recommendations to help improve the experiences of dementia diagnosis and support. First, signposting services are important to aid the navigation of the healthcare system and informational resources can support experiences around helpseeking and accessing care. Specifically, the needs of people with dementia and informal caregivers should be addressed separately with a need for easily accessible information for people with dementia. This can be achieved by actively including people with dementia in the design process of (web-based) informational resources. Designing informational resources together with people with dementia can ensure that relevant elements for them are included. This not only relates to the content of the information but also to the structure and presentation of information through the use of appropriate language and visual elements. Second, the perceived complexity of healthcare systems holds important implications for the burden of informal caregivers. They are often assigned the task of navigating these complex healthcare systems to obtain post-diagnostic support for the person with dementia. Whilst in theory, post-diagnostic support should be able to alleviate some of their burden, the perceived complexity of this process and negative experiences with support can contribute to the burden they experienced. In addition, interventions designed to address informal caregiver burden and support informal caregivers are paradoxically also housed within the same system that they deem difficult to navigate. It is therefore worth exploring how these interventions can be made easily accessible and take into account individual preferences and values. Third, this thesis offers several implications and recommendations for future dementia research. This thesis strongly advocates for the inclusion of people with dementia in research. Researchers might need to take a creative approach to foster inclusion that takes into account the difficulties people with dementia might encounter in more traditional research approaches. In addition, research should collaborate with key audiences that might go beyond the three audiences included in this thesis (such as policymakers, educational systems and social networks around a person with dementia) to expand the current findings and identify ways to further improve experiences of living with dementia.
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