Nursing Case Study Dementia Essay

According to Hylman (1992), elderly are people that is going through metabolic processes and physiological of aging so their functioning has become impaired. Based on Louw, Van & Louw (1998). change is a constant element of life. During the earlier life stages, physical, cognitive, personality and social changes enable the individual to acquire new skills and to explore new opportunities for learning. During old age, numerous changes still take place in the same areas. However most of these changes now represent loss or deterioration which requires adjustments. A family assessment was conducted on Client, Alice, who is eighty-eight years old female .She falls under the category of late adulthood. She married at the age of 23 and later got

Is a cognitive and behavioural disorder that poses serious problems both for the affected person and her caregiver (McLean, 2007).Characterize by progressive cognitive deterioration in persons aged 65 and older as the result of neuropathology changes in the brain (McLean, 2007). The early signs and symptoms of dementia are disability to focus and pay attention, get confuse of time, difficulty in completing familiar task at home and they withdraw from social activities (McLean, 2007). For Alice, she shows the signs and symptoms of confused, forgetful and wandering. For example there was once she went to the market and did not know the way back home but thankfully her neighbor saw her and bring her home. Hence, the mini-mental state exam (2015) was used as an approach to measure her cognitive impairment. Furthermore the test helps to diagnose dementia and assess its progression and severity. Alice scored 20 points which interprets that she suffers from mild cognitive impairment or possibly early staged/mild Alzheimer’s disease (Kreutzer, Caplan & DeLuca, 2011). To help in slowing down the process of dementia since it cannot be treated, the doctor prescribes on giving her medication when he first found