. This calls for the need of dementia care to accommodate these patients. The main aim of dementia care is to maintain the personhood in the face of advancing impairment of cognition (Hunter, 2009). This is primarily to help in addressing the plight that people with dementia are facing. Different practitioners or caregivers provide dementia patient care. There are those practitioners who prefer to provide this care at home and those who prefer to provide it in institutions. Each of the cares has its implications on dementia patient. Institutional Care for Dementia Patients Institutional care for dementia patients entails segregating the patients from their social setting or homes and putting them in one place for reasons of providing them with care. Admission into the institutions is based on a number of factors such as functional disability, dementia, and absence of caregiver to the affected people. In the institutions, patients are given care based on a number of care models. Scholars devised these models with the aim of improving the lives of people within the institutions that provide such care. The models include the medical model of care, the social model of care, and the model of excess disability. Each of the models serves specific needs for the patients in different institutions. However, the most common model that is employed in different institutions is the social approach that provides long-term facilities and entails the Eden alternative model and the gentle care model. The Gentle-Care Social Model The proponent of the gentle-care model is Moyra Jones (1984). The model is majorly used in the United States, Europe and Canada special care units. For instance, in Canada-Ontario, Mary crest home for the Aged in Peterborou... ... middle of paper ... ...airment where the patient or the aged are greatly affected. In most cases, dementia patients are not catered for and they are traumatized due to loneliness, boredom, and helplessness. This makes the majority of the patients die earlier as compared to when proper care is given to them. In order to reduce their deaths and make the aged to feel comfortable, institutional living for dementia patients is important as it has caregivers that understand their needs and accommodate them accordingly. This is because institutions greatly account for the helplessness, loneliness and boredom that a majority of the dementia patients will be suffering. This occurs through provision of an enabling environment in which the needs of the aged will be catered for. Therefore, institutional living for dementia patients is of great help rather than leaving the aged to live on their own.
Long-term care (LTC) covers a wide range of clinical and social services for those who need assistance due to functional limitations. These limitations usually result from complications associated with age related chronic conditions, from disabilities related to birth defects, brain damage, or mental retardation in children; or from major illnesses or injuries suffered by adults (Shi L. & Singh D.A., 2011). LTC encompasses a variety of services including traditional clinical services, social services and housing. Unlike acute care, long-term care is much more complicated and has objectives that are much harder to measure. Acute care mainly focuses on returning patients to their previous functional level and is primarily provided by specialty providers. However, LTC mainly focuses on preventing the physical and mental deterioration of an individual and promoting social adjustments to suit the different stages of decline. In addition the providers of LTC are more diverse than those in acute care and is offered in both formal and informal settings, which include: hospitals, physicians, home care, adult day care, nursing home care, assisted living and even informal caregivers such as friends and family members. Long-term care services have been dominated by community based services, which include informal care (86%, about 10 to 11 million) and formal institutional care delivered in nursing facilities (14%, 1.6 million) (McCall, 2001). Of more than the 10 million Americans estimated to require LTC services, 58% are elderly and 42% are under the age of 65 (Shi L. & Singh D.A., 2011). The users of LTC are either frail elderly or disabled and because of the specific care needs of this population, the care varies based on an indiv...
care to the residents suffering from dementia. Banner et al (2009 as cited in Lee J.et al.2012)
Dementia is the loss of a person’s mental skills from their daily routines. The symptoms of dementia could easily be over looked, they include forgetting things, daily routines are hard to complete, misplacing things, depression, aggravation and aggression, emotion are high, even feeling like someone is a threat to their life (Web MD,2012). Caring for someone with dementia can be difficult if with resources like healthcare, living facilities, nursing homes and medicine is involved, but sometimes healthcare and facilities do not provide the proper care. This disease is very common in the elderly community past the age of sixty-five. Finding out that a loved
Due to an ageing population , The Francis Report recommends the introduction of a new status of nurse, the “registered older persons nurse”. One of the illnesses linked in with this is dementia, and multiple factors relating to dementia are having an impact on how nurses are trained and their deliverance of services. In 2013, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) began a new development program to transform dementia care for hospitals. There aim is to develop skills and knowledge related to dementia, the roles of all those who are involved, understanding the development of action plans that identify key changes.
Because there is no cure for Alzheimer's disease, taking on the responsibility of caring for patients in the home is a long term responsibility that requires a lot of planning and consideration. This is not a decision to be made on a whim or because of emotion. All options need to be weighed, and everyone affected needs to be considered. Placing a family member in a long-term care facility does not spell out neglect. Depending on the circumstances of the caregiver, caring for the patient in the home may lead to more neglect. The ‘right choice’ is different in each case, but without considering all the facets of your own situation the wrong choice will be made. I hope that this information will make that heavy decision a little easier to bear.
In most facilities an initiative lifestyle has been organized to give people with dementia a voice in how and where they are cared for (White). This is how things should be everywhere in the world when it comes to people with dementia. People affected by this disease don’t need people to tell them what to do or make decisions for them, they need the freedom to do it themselves so they don’t give up. Although incapacity is common, many persons with dementia are capable of making their own medical and research decisions (Kim, Karlawish, and Caine). At the early stages of dementia, a will needs to be made so medical wishes can be granted. When people are given the freedom of choice, they are much happier, they live longer, and they have a better attitude about the disease they are suffering from. Individuals that get dementia did not get it by choice, but they live through it day by day with strength and the ability to live
Non drug treatment includes counseling of patients and family members of the possible mental changes and what can be done to ease the transition. Environmental changes and daily habits can be altered to reduce any obstacles associated with dementia and cognitive exercises can be performed by patients to he...
Most long-term care facilities have a nice, caring environment. Most facilities have exceptionally trained personnel caring for that family member’s needs and concerns. Being within the nursing field one notices the morale and the health of these forgotten individuals declining rapidly with no family bonds to connect to anymore. The nursing staff and facilities members, attempt to replace the bonds lost between resident and family. The bonds formed with staff and resident, are not equal to seeing a grandchild at holidays, and being included at that special family reunion. It is understandable some family units don t carry the tight connections other ily units share. Family support systems most require on admittance to semiprivate, busy nursing home settings are lost. Surroundings of this...
Dementia is an umbrella term used to explain the gradual decline in multiple areas of functions, which includes thinking, perception, communication, memory, languages, reasoning, and the ability to function (Harrison-Dening 2013). Worldwide, 47.5 million people have dementia and there are 7.7 million new cases every year. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia and may contribute to 60–70% of cases. (Alzheimer's society 2014). The complexity of dementia presents a number of behavioural challenges to those who live with dementia and their care providers. Aggressive behaviour seems to be one of the most prevalent challenging behaviours in the different stages of dementia (Weitzel et al 2011). As acute care settings are not the best places for people afflicted with dementia , it is necessary to empower the hospitalised people with dementia and their family members. As nurses are often the central core of care, they should have the potential of positive long-term effect on the lives of people with dementia (Harrison-Dening 2013). Inadequate training, lack of specialised education, negative attitudes and poor practice development can precipitate a failure in the delivery of high-quality care for the hospitalised dementia people (Chater & Hughes 2012).
Dementia care offers support and services to an individual affected by the disease itself, which is dementia. It addresses the right and needs of the person with dementia and their families. Improving quality of life and changing attitudes towards dementia is the main goal of dementia care. Dementia care also provides quality of care, maintain dignity and promote health, security and comfort in consideration with the standard of care and ethical guidelines (Adams & Manthorpe, 2003).
By the late 1970s it was very evident that the traditional setting of a nursing home was no longer suitable for the aging seniors and their family members. With developments in medicine seniors were able to age in place, so many were begging for the establishment of a nursing home. With many rumors of mistreatment and neglect surrounding long-term care receiving more and more advertising, the need for
Difficulty recognizing people and places, remembering their phone number, where they live and how to get there, short-term memory loss, confusion, poor concentration, distraction, and an inability to solve problems and learn new things all encumber the cognitive effects of dementia (“Dementia, Its Effect and Impact on a Person”). Secondly, someone may find complications in everyday tasks. The management of money, verbal skills, and even following social cues are examples of functional interferences (“Dementia, Its Effect and Impact on a Person”). Moreover, dementia drastically affects an individuals behavioral functions. Where there was once someone of noticeable extroverted qualities, he/she is now forced to the confines of their home without an ounce of sociability in them. Additionally, they may have overactive responses and repetitive questions or display an increase in physical/verbal aggression (“Dementia, Its Effect and Impact on a Person”). Correspondingly, a dementia patient will suffer from frequent mood swings. At one moment he/she could be very social, laughing and communicating like they used to, then ten minutes later they grow significantly more frustrated and irritable. Similarly, family members of their loved one will also notice changes in personality, anxiety, loss of motivation, and depression (“Dementia, Its Effect and Impact on a Person”). However, although these effects are direct corollaries of dementia and directly influence the individual at hand, its effect on the caregiver is equally important and is worth noting. In fact, around seventy-four percent of caregivers were somewhat concerned about maintaining their own health while caring for a dementia patient (“2016 Alzheimer’s Statistics”). Due to this, although caregivers are forced to be attentive towards their loved one, it is
"Who does a son turn to, when his 78 year-old mother, newly admitted to a nursing home’s rehab unit, is experiencing delusions and screams through the night? Or where does a daughter turn to for help when she notices a rapid decline in her mother’s health and her mother refuses to seek medical care? Or the gentleman who believes it is time to a continuing care retirement community, but has no one to advise him on the myriad of financial and lifestyle implications of such a move? (Lederman, 2012)." Within in the field of home health care, ecological system creates an outline for defining what it means to provide quality care to the elderly.
The marked physical and cognitive functional declines over time often results in placing individuals with moderate to severe stage of dementia in the aged care facility with high level of care. Dementia associated behavioural symptoms, such as agitation and confusion, are the clinical manifestations throughout the trajectory of the disease, which impacts on residents’ quality of life and increases the stress of caring staff (Gitlin, Kales & Lyketsos 2012).
Time never stops. Minutes tick by on clocks, as every living thing ages. Eventually, those minutes add up to years, and, sometimes, in the blink of an eye, year by year, a person is suddenly much older. Time takes its toll and leaves a person wisened, and wrinkled. The time comes when it must be decided who will care after this person. When choosing a method to care for the elderly, there are both negative, and positive aspects to each option that should be considered before arriving at a decision. Will one care for the older relative at home, or will one place them into an institution where one is not sure of the care they will receive?