The Importance Of Caregivers Of Dementia

Dementia should be viewed as a disability as the symptoms affect the individuals’ ability to be responsible for their everyday needs for example taking medication, remembering to eat and drink. Dementia also affects a persons’ capacity which can be a risk to their safety. Symptoms of dementia can be a big risk to the person as it affects memory so the person with dementia could forget vital things like turning an over off, not locking doors. Balance can also be affected so falls, slips and trips are quite common which means aids need to be put into place to try and prevent the risk of falls, slips, trips and other risks like leaving the oven on or not taking medication. Not having the capacity or ability to act responsibly for their health and safety is viewed as

Going through this uncertainty and confusion often causes people to retreat to the safety of established memories, and they begin to lose awareness of the world around them. Nurses and other care givers who have never met these behaviors before often do not know how to respond when a person with dementia asks difficult questions, such as requesting to see a mother who has passed away. It can also be difficult to know how to reply if they believe they need to go to work or collect children from school. It is important to remember, in the later stages communication is most challenging, that continuing to interact with the person who has dementia is more important than ever.

Nurses in Complex Continuing Care Encountering Ethical Dilemmas of Autonomy and Wellbeing When Patient with Dementia Wants to go Home Bhakti Amin Student # A0622083 Professor S. Cairns NURS 2047 23 March 2018 Introduction Dementia continues to grow as a condition diagnosed among elderly females, researchers have hypothesized that this is due to longer female life expectancy (Podcasy & Epperson, 2016). Allowing a client with dementia to stay in their own can have several benefits such as joy, comfort, socially connected, maintain identity, and have meaning in life; however, in many cases, clients with dementia require complex continuous care (CCC) to support their health and wellness needs and the needs of their family (Lilly

This point is particularly relevant for Ian as due to dementia he is classified as ‘vulnerable’ as he lacks the ability to look after himself or protect himself from any form of abuse (Care Act, 2014:c23pt1). Safeguarding is a primary duty of my role as a social worker so it is something I always need to be vigilant about, especially as 12-55% of older people with dementia experience abuse, like financial, physical or emotional, by family members (Cooper et al,

Studies have shown, by overwhelming margins, that people with dementia and their carers believe that within their country, the associations with those diagnosed with dementia are negative (Wortmann, 2013).This tendency of stigma to promote social exclusion instead of a caring community for stigmatised individuals often discourages help-seeking by patients and their caregivers (Cheng et al., 2011). In fact, a 2010 study analysing the key barriers to the diagnosis and management of people with dementia, identified stigma as one of the major themes preventing patients or their families from seeking medical help, due to their embarrassment or shame (Koch & Iliffe, 2010). Furthermore, Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) reports that people with dementia are less likely to to seek support once diagnosed due to stigma (Swaffer, 2014). Additionally, stigma has been discovered to impact late presentation to services via the concealment of symptoms, and delays in identification and diagnosis after presentation because of the notion that services had little to offer across Europe. Furthermore, some cultures found the acceptance of care to be stigmatising (Benbow & Jolley,

Alzheimer 's is a hard disease to deal with, and more often, caregivers are needed for patients with Alzheimer 's disease. As a caregiver, it will not be an easy thing to do. In fact, caregivers are often stressed and overwhelmed because of the frequent care the Alzheimer 's patients require. They require help with eating, bathing, dressing, taking prescribed medication, communicating, help going to the bathroom, and more. Patients with Alzheimer 's are not able to perform these daily tasks because they may forget how to do them.

Care givers: caring for a family member or friend with a physical or mental illness can be stressful, exhausting, both mentally and physically, and creates a physical and psychological strain for the care giver over a period of time. The psychological well-being such as depression and stress, are frequent consequences of caregiving. The age, socioeconomic status, and the availability of informal support that caregivers have access to greatly affect their own health and well being. Caring for a family member with a mental illness can differ from caring for someone suffering from a physical illness. In addition to the medical care and long term treatment of a family member, an open and liberal view of mental illness is almost an essential in being able to care for someone who is ill.

Older persons frequently experience social isolation after losing family and friends, which makes them more susceptible to abuse. Elderly people frequently find themselves depending on others, such as paid carers or friends and relatives for assistance with everyday tasks. Thesis Statement The thesis statement is ‘some of the factors that heightened elder abuse include poor health, disability, and dependence on the caregiver.’ This essay's focus is on the

but it tends to have focused either on the patient or caregiver; here we looked at the patients and their partners within the family unit. This study would be able to be use as a guideline for future studies done in this subject. It’s important to understand that by helping those that are caregivers and offer them support, the lifeworld of both can be better.

These concepts still apply and are implemented in today’s nursing care in multiple health care organizations. For example, changes in my current health care organization during construction of the replacement hospital expanded room sizes and designed additional sitting areas in patient rooms to include family members in the nursing care. Family Crisis Oriented Personal Evaluation Scales (F-COPES) is an assessment tool to assess the how family members adjust psychologically to the stress and evaluate their coping mechanisms (Friedman et al., 2003). An article in a nursing journal discussed the use of this tool to evaluate a group of heart transplant patients in a study to measure coping behaviors. The F-COPES tool measured five different coping strategies, including: acquiring social support, reframing, seeking spiritual support, mobilizing family to accept help and passive appraisal, with Scottish and American patients (Kaba & Shanley, 1997).

This theory has five phases regarding the changing identity of a caregiver: the first phase is the beginning of caregiving, the second is the caregiver’s realization that their caregiving responsibilities are more than they expected, the third phase is when both caregiver and care recipient become uncomfortable in their roles, which is also the phase when some caregivers walk away from their role, and for the caregivers who continue in their role, in the fourth phase there is another identity shift with the caregiver identity becoming dominate, and the final phase is when the care recipient is moved to a long-term care setting and the caregiver relishes the majority of the caregiver responsibilities and attempts to reclaim their identity at

Almost half (36.3%) of the caregivers had high level of burden. Relationship to

For the purpose of this assignment I have chosen to reflect on not knowing how to treat a confused patient with dementia. During this experience I felt like I was of no help to the patient and as a result I was useless to the staff. I felt like this because I didn’t know how to talk to this lady. I didn’t understand how to act or what to say to fix the situation.

Caregivers Who are caregivers? Caregivers are either paid or unpaid individuals who work at hospitals, clinics, age-old homes, and patients ' residence to provide personal care. They perform all sorts of menial job like feeding, bathing, walking, dressing, exercising, laundry, grocery shopping, and transporting home to medial setting and vice versa besides caring. The basic aim of caregiver profession is to care for elderly and all-aged patients, and help them live a normal and healthy life.

Rao et. al. (2015) revealed that majority of the elderlies didn’t receive love, respect and affection from their family members, were highly dissatisfied with the behavior of their children and were considered as a burden by the family members. In addition, Chan et. al. (2015) found out that one of the significant risk factor for mortality among elderlies is loneliness. On the other hand, variances in the experience of loneliness and depression with diverse demographic characteristics was discussed by Sum et.