Evelyn Reilly

Clinical Nurse Specialist Dementia and Intellectual Disability.

Evelyn is a Registered Nurse in Intellectual Disability Nursing (RNID) and has a particular interest in ageing, care of the older person with intellectual disability (ID), and promoting person centred care for people with dementia.

As one of the first Clinical Nurse Specialists in ID and Dementia, she manages the day-to-day operations of a service wide Memory Clinic for the Daughters of Charity Disability Support Service. She plays a lead role in assessing the symptoms of dementia, contributing to final diagnosis in consultation with other practitioners, and offers training in dementia care to all levels of staff, family, and peers.

The focus of her work is frontline practice that supports quality of life outcomes for people with an intellectual disability and dementia, as well as promoting active and healthy ageing for people with lifelong disability. She has contributed to various publications on intellectual disability and dementia and her research intersects across several key areas, with an overall focus on the understanding of people with ID & dementia and improving their care experience from diagnosis to end-of-life.

Evelyn works closely with IDS-TILDA at Trinity College Dublin, and is involved in research for the study of the complex interrelationship between pre-existing impairment, physical, psychosocial and environmental factors that affect healthy ageing in persons with an intellectual disability.