About the Author

Suzanna Dooley PhD., CSLS. MIASLT is a speech and language therapist in a community hospital in the Health Service Executive in Dublin, Ireland. She is a clinical specialist in communication and dementia. Her teaching, practice and research focuses on the assessment of cognitive communication disorders in dementia and the development of conversation coaching interventions for people with dementia and their supporters. The P-CAD validation study formed the basis of her PhD research with Dr. Margaret Walshe in 2020 in Trinity College Dublin and was funded by the Health Research Board Ireland. 

Tammy Hopper, PhD, R-SLP, CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist and professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, at the University of Alberta in Canada. She has worked with individuals with dementia in research and clinical settings for more than two decades. The focus of her research is on interventions to facilitate communication between individuals with dementia and their friends, family and caregivers. She is an author or co-author of more than 75 published manuscripts and book chapters, and she has provided more than 80 presentations on her research. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada with her husband, two children, three cats, and one dog.

Margaret Walshe, M.Sc. PhD is an Associate Professor and speech and language therapist at the University of Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her specific area of interest is evidence-based practice and rehabilitation in communication and swallowing disorders. She has worked with individuals with dementia focusing on communication and swallowing difficulties as a clinician for a number of years. She is a member of the interprofessional Cochrane Rehabilitation Field and has published over 160 manuscripts and conference abstracts. 

Reviews

Profiling Communication in Dementia (P-CAD) is designed to assess the functional communication abilities of persons with dementia and determine the communication supports needed to maintain a quality life. The P-CAD is unique in that communication partners are included in the assessment allowing for their input and revealing specific support strategies for different settings. The P-CAD has shown strong positive correlations with the Functional Linguistic Communication Inventory (FLCI), the Mini Mental State Examination-2, and across Levels 4-7 of the Global Deterioration Scale (GDS). It will be a useful alternative to other measures of cognitive communication functioning.
*Dr Michelle Bourgeois*

Covers many of the domains I think are important for assessment of communication skills in dementia (particularly AD and Vascular) and it seems broadly culturally relevant and current. The stimulus images are clear. It won't take too long and is a good mixture of tests and observations. I feel it is comparable to other tests such as the Comprehensive aphasia test, and an improvement on the ABCD. It is more comprehensive than the MMSE and more functional. I also appreciate it has standardised with people with dementia. It emphasises the importance of the interactional component being a joint responsibility of both participants in the conversation. It can definitely be used to identify support strategies- with some tentative individualisation. I prefer it to an MMSE. It is more functional and relevant. I believe it is the first tool to include communication partner as a central focus of the assessment.
*Dr Anna Volkmer, University College London*