ABSTRACT

Geriatric patients with chronic diseases and dementia have been increasing while there have been increasing innumbers in older people due to a prolonged life expectancy. Dementia patients are requiring care services eitherat home or in nursing facilities when they are not able to manage their daily lives by themselves. Quality of care would be a big challenge to care service providers whereas Korea lacks professional healthcare workers irrespective of growing trend in dementia patients. Thankfully, the Korean government tried to improve the quality of care lately while adopting a agenda of national responsibility for dementia-related issues lately.However, it seemed there would be no appropriate policy of training dementia care specialists in the governmental agenda. Thus, the author, in the current editorial, asserted the need for subdividing the roles of geriatric nurse practitioner into specialist nurse in dementia care who can provide professional services (e.g., care, health promotion, rehabilitation) to dementia patients and their family members in the community.