Understanding the personhood of Deaf people with dementia: Methodological issues

AbstractThis article concerns Deaf people in the United Kingdom, who use sign language, who have a formal diagnosis of dementia and who have participated in interviews in British Sign Language (BSL) about their experience of living with dementia. We address the methodological challenges involved in enabling culturally meaningful participation in circumstances where the non-verbal is not equivalent to the non-linguistic. We demonstrate the use of interpretative narrative representation of data for purposes of cultural brokering. We explore the contribution of Deaf people's experiences and the analysis of their visual, spatial narratives to debates about personhood and the embodied self in dementia studies. Finally, we consider the significance of the situational as cultural in relation to holistic interpretation of narrative

Community Paramedicine: A New Approach to Health in Rural Communities

The community paramedicine (CP) concept is becoming widely used in rural communities to assist in maintaining and improving health across economic and geographic disparities. This model utilizes highly trained emergency medical service (EMS) professionals under the supervision of a physician or other advanced practice practitioner (i.e., physician assistants and advanced practice registered nurses; Patterson et al., 2016) to provide a variety of needed health services tailored to community needs. CP has been shown to be effective in many communities and, given these positive results, should be considered in rural communities where geographic barriers limit access to healthcare (Martin & O\u27Meara, 2019). This fact sheet will review the positive impacts that CP can have in a community, the policy required to start CP, and how individuals can advocate for CP in their community