Caregivers, Family Members, Concerned Friends

Dementia Connection offers you the latest research, a supportive community and strategies to help you take control of your situation.

Q. What is Dementia Connection and How Can it Help Us?

A. We are a new and growing online information “portal” for families
     dealing with:

• Alzheimer’s disease (late onset type and early onset type)
• Vascular dementia
• Lewy body dementia
• Parkinson’s dementia
• Fronto-temporal lobe dementia
• Mild cognitive impairment
• Caregiver challenges

Q. Are you giving medical advice?

A.  No, Dementia Connection in NOT a substitute for your relationship with your physician, nurse practitioner, physician assistant or any other health care provider.  We provide information to help you communicate with your providers and to fully understand your options for support, diagnosis and treatment of the common types of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.

Q.  So why you, a nurse practitioner?

A.  As a nurse practitioner working with elders across all clinical settings for nearly three decades, I’m used to complex situations.  For the past decade, I’ve limited my practice to dementia and Alzheimer’s.  I know the medical treatment as a nurse practitioner, yet as a nurse, I have the latest research on non-pharmacological strategies to communicate with, relate to, and interact with someone with dementia.

Q. How can you help my loved one and me?

A. There is help, and plenty of it.  Consider Dementia Connection your guide, your navigator, your GPS.  I have my own national network of specialists in dementia care, built over the past 11 years. Some are researchers who do the Alzheimer’s and dementia studies. I plan to share their information, combined with my own experience through:

Weekly information tips to be emailed to you (sign up in the yellow box at the right upper corner of this page
A monthly free phone/web seminar where you can email me your own personal questions anonymously or by first name only once a month (same sign up yellow box at the right upper corner of this page)
Periodic releases of You-Tube videos explaining segments on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.  Click on You-Tube
Regular posts to my Facebook Group at where you can comment, ask questions to others in the group
Tweets (for those of you not familiar with twitter) are great for the truly time-crunched.  You get dementia news in 140 characters or less!  Go to
A chance for your dementia questions to be heard.  You can post your questions (anonymously or by first name only please) on anything related to dementia or Alzheimer’s on our blog.  I have many followers who are other geriatric experts.  Our goal is to start a conversation between experts, caregivers and persons with dementia. I’ve given seminars to family caregivers for the past seven years.  I know how difficult it is to schedule/attend support group meetings and dementia education programs. Now you can do this in the privacy of your own home. Supplement you caregiving meetings with online support!
Plan to join our blog discussions at Our Blog
Welcome, we want to help you…dementia is my passion!  We are not able to take personal phone calls.  The only emails we can answer are during our free monthly telephone/internet seminars. We do plan to use the Internet to get you what you need.  We will be offering more as time goes on:  books to read, information products, etc.

Susan Scanland, MSN, CRNP
Board-Certified Nurse Practitioner