Caring for Elderly Patients with Dementia

Nursing professionals who care for the elderly must face a range of different questions and issues that arise in their daily jobs. Complete care can be difficult to administer, especially within the demographics of dementia patients. Nurses working with this population face challenges in regard to the extent of their responsibility to make a patient comfortable, and where that responsibility intersects with that of a patient’s family members.

There is a certain social obligation to care for those members of our society who are unable to satisfactorily care for themselves. Within the elderly population of those who have dementia, what may seem like menial everyday tasks such as cooking or walking the dog become insurmountable obstacles. This can be incredibly difficult for family members to handle taking care of, and so the responsibility becomes shared by nursing professionals. They must be trained on how to handle such situations while still expressing the human compassion that dementia patients need. At a micro level, that means providing support and becoming a resource for questions that arise about the intensive level of care required in dealing with a dementia patient. Because it is such an emotional experience to see a loved one go through the symptoms associated with dementia, families are often left vulnerable and full of questions about what is happening. Oftentimes the amount of stress this level of care places on those untrained in health-care becomes a health risk to the rest of a family, especially when adult children are already dealing with the cognitive decline of their parents (Schulz & Martire, 2004). Therefore, it is of utmost importance to openly communicate and discuss the best methods for care of an elderly patient. For a professional nurse, this can mean establishing and promoting support groups for family members to connect their experiences with others who are going through or have already been through the same situation. These can be on the local or even with the advent of technological communication via the internet. As a nurse whose job it should be to promote the easiest possible transition between levels of care for the elderly population, these tools and systems of connecting families are of great importance. Because there are no standards for family care as there are in healthcare institutions in the United States, there is a marked difference in what is provided for dementia patients living in a home atmosphere (Schulz & Martire, 2004). It is up to nursing professionals involved in such situations to bridge that gap and ensure that patient care is as ideal as can be within these means.

An extensive amount of professional care is so often necessary for elderly patients with dementia that it can become a huge financial burden for families. The level of care required is equivalent to patients in the terminal stages of cancer (Neelam, Buhagiar, Flood, & Cosgrave, 2010). As a nurse caring for this population, it is important to consider the monetary problems such a responsibility can create and to innovate and find solutions to reduce the financial impact. Such answers include informal care in the capacity of community support and training family caregivers (Neelam et al., 2010). Care for the elderly has recently become more of a hot-button political topic, as it is closely related to topics of social welfare and public responsibility. This concerns questions of ethics, and whether it is the greater social responsibility to care for the elderly, or if individual families should shoulder the provision for their parents and grandparents. These subjects create a divide for between conservative factions who believe in fewer government programs and greater individual responsibility and left-leaning citizens who support more programs such as Medicare and social security run through the system. Political differences aside, there is a benefit to creating and maintaining a system of support bigger than the individual family for both nursing professionals and family members. There is a great risk of psychological diseases becoming drawn out in caretakers of elderly dementia patients (Schulz & Martire, 2004). As such, the health of the overall population does not suffer nearly as much within a system that supports family caretakers, or that takes some of the burden off of them. This is a positive outcome that transcends political or ethical differences in beliefs.

Elderly patients suffering from dementia symptoms are in a position of little power to affect their own lives. This vulnerability, unfortunately, can result in a lessened attempt to care for them to a satisfactory level on the part of nursing staff, and opens them up to elder abuse (Schwarzkopf et al., 2011). It is all too easy to overlook the needs of a person who cannot clearly communicate what it is they require to be well. This places a great amount of responsibility on nursing staff in an environment caring for the elderly to anticipate patient needs as well as ensure that they have made the patient as comfortable and well taken care of as possible. It has been proven that dementia patients have less involvement in the dialogue about their own treatment and what that treatment entails as other health complications arise (Schwarzkopf et al., 2011). Knowing this information, a nursing professional is in a position to affect change as he or she feels is necessary, within the different levels of care all the way up to nationally.

Nursing professionals who work with elderly dementia patients shoulder a great responsibility to care for this population. This is a unique atmosphere that becomes important work to provide for those who can no longer be self-sufficient. As such, it is of utmost importance that nurses work within their own care system on a local level, and also connect with other professionals to offer solutions to the challenges that arise from such an intensive level of care. These solutions include innovation in the form of establishing support systems to connect families and nurses alike with the resources and information they need to understand dementia and what they can do to facilitate a patient’s comfort as much as possible.

References

Neelam, A., Buhagiar, K., Flood, J., & Cosgrave, M. (2010). Quality of end-of-life care for dementia patients during acute hospital admission: A retrospective study in Ireland. General Hospital Psychiatry, 32(2), 141-146. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1098301511014148

Schwarzkopf,, L., Menn, P., Graessel, E., Kunz, S., … & Wunder, S. (2011). Costs of care for dementia patients in community setting: An analysis for mild and moderate disease stage. Value in Health, 14(6), 827-835. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1098301511014148

Schulz, R., & Martire, L. (2004). Family caregiving of persons with dementia: Prevalence, health effects, and support strategies. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 12(3), 240-249. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1064748112617746