”TÄMÄ PUHELIN ON TAIVAAN LAHJA” : Vertaislinja muistisairauden kanssa elävän tukena
Puhakka Karoliina Peer-listening phone service supporting people with dementia and their family 43 p., 1 appendix. Language: Finnish. Helsinki, Spring 2011. Diaconia University of Applied Sciences. Degree Programme in Nursing, Option in Nursing. Degree: Nurse. Peer-support is one of the relative s or dementia suffering person s form of support. It helps coping with dementia. Health care professionals should guide relatives and dementia patients to this significant support. The aim of this study was to establish what the needs of information and support were for those people who call to Vertaislinja of Muistiliitto (Alzheimer Society of Finland). Vertaislinja is a peer-listening phone service. Volunteers work at this phone service and they fill in a form based on every call. Muistiliitto society has stored every form since the phone service was established in 2004. From this material I chose all the forms from year 2008. The final number of research material consisted of 266 forms. I analyzed the callers and the call topics from the forms as well as where the volunteers referred the callers to during the call. The typical caller of Vertaislinja was a wife of a person with Alzheimer s disease (n=80) or their daughter (n=79). The most common topic of the call was telling about concerns (n=89). Usually the caller wanted to tell their concerns about daily matters. The second most common topic was talking about the symptoms and the research of the disease (n=74). In all 53 calls, callers wanted to ask advice or receive information on something. Based on the results of this thesis, relatives and people close to the person suffering from dementia as well as the person themselves need some information of the disease, its symptoms and advice on daily situations as well as information on peer group activity. Sometimes volunteers also refer callers to peer groups and other recreational activities. According to the results, family members and people with dementia need also information that only health care professionals can provide.