Nursing care of older people with dementia

Nursing care of older people with dementia

Roger Watson

www.slideshare.net/RogerWatsonPhDRNFAAN

Ageing and

dementia

Distribution of types of dementia

What does dementia affect?

Problems associated with dementia

• Intelligence

– Lose problem solving ability

• Memory

– Become forgetful and lost

• Language

– Difficulty communicating

Progress of dementia – anatomical

Progress of dementia - temporal

Problems associated with dementia

• Wandering

• Aggression

• Incontinence

• Feeding and nutrition

Nursing role

Dementia care environments

Signage

The Edinburgh Feeding Evaluation in Dementia (EdFED) scale

2010

Ethical and legal dimensions

Because we cannot readily interpret the actions of a person

with dementia we do not know what to do for the best

Questions:

How do we alleviate eating difficulty?

What constitutes force feeding?

When do we stop feeding a person with dementia?

Tube feeding

Support for families

Preventing dementia

• Five ‘Golden Rules’

– Take exercise– Eat a healthy (Mediterranean diet)– Quit smoking– Drink alcohol in moderation– Prevent/treat diabetes and raised BP

Conclusion

• More people globally are suffering from dementia

• Dementia affects every aspect of life

• There is – at the moment – no ‘cure’ for dementia

• Nurses must offer advice and support to families as well as to the persons with dementia

• We must not forger that the person with dementia is still a person

[email protected]

0000-0001-8040-7625

@rwatson1955