USF Nursing’s Dr. Meredeth Rowe and her latest research on dementia gets highlighted on Healthinaging.org
A research study on Missing Drivers with Dementia: Antecedents and Recovery, conducted by Professor and Endowed Chair with University of South Florida College of Nursing, Meredeth A. Rowe, RN, PhD, FGSA, FAAN, was highlighted in a Healthinaging.org article.
Healthinaging.org, created by the American Geriatrics Society Foundation for Health in Aging (FHA) to provide consumers and caregivers with information on health and aging, published a summary of Dr. Rowe’s article and discussed its results to inform their readers about her groundbreaking results on the topic.
USF College of Nursing, Meredeth A. Rowe, RN, PhD, FGSA, FAAN
Dr. Rowe’s study focused on how people with dementia become lost while driving, how missing drivers are found, and the role of public notification systems like Silver Alert in these discoveries suggests techniques that may help recover drivers with dementia and prevent potentially harmful incidents.
“We learned that there are different characteristics for people with dementia who become lost while driving compared to those who become lost while walking,” said Dr. Rowe in the Healthinagin.org article. “Drivers wandered farther away from their last location and tended to end up at businesses and roadways and were located by law enforcement. This knowledge could help communities develop effective ways to prevent an incident, organize a search plan, and use citizen alerts. Our ultimate goal is to better predict which people with dementia are likeliest to get lost while driving, the situations in which this occurs, and how to develop effective plans for safe recovery.”
The findings of Dr. Rowe’s study were published online in November, 2012 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society: Missing Drivers with Dementia: Antecedents and Recovery.
To read USF College of Nursing’s Press Release on Dr. Rowe’s research study visit, “Improved Prevention and Search Techniques May Improve Recovery and Avoid Incidents of Missing Drivers with Dementia, Study Led by USF Nursing Finds.”
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