How Patients Suffering from Dementia Face Numerous Challenges

Dementia
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Patients suffering from dementia face numerous challenges besides loss in cognitive functioning including remembering, reasoning and thinking. Hence, they may not perform their daily duties, and dementia is not necessarily a disease, but an onset of symptoms that significantly reduce cognitive function among the elderly. Health promotion efforts highlight the approaches to prevent diseases, while addressing preparedness to improve the quality of life and communicating health information to improve awareness. Memory loss alone is not a symptom of dementia, while Alzheimer’s is the most common disease that is dementia. Diagnosis of dementia is important to improve the quality of care, since health care practitioners ought to distinguish dementia form similar conditions that also cause the loss of memory and cognitive functioning. This is especially when such conditions are temporary.
Even though, patients with dementia have challenges recalling and learning because of memory loss, but they can learn about procedures. The way information is presented affects learning and retention, and hence nurses and care providers undertake interventions based on the abilities in learning and recalling. This complicates intervention as the patients may fail to participate actively in facility programs that seek to improve management of dementia. Additionally, the elderly may have low self esteem and lack of social support and when the needs are not met the patients may exhibit problematic behavior even when care givers target to meet objectives to reduce preventable hospitalizations.
In assessing the cases of dementia the objective focus on possible changes by comparing the target with the development. Additionally, the type of dementia, disease severity, and age are to be considered while considering improving patient care as they influence survival time (Brodaty, Seeher, & Gibson, 2012). There is concern when the number of patients getting worse rises after undertaking preventive services. At other times, there may be little changes indicating that the target has not been met. Physicians that have geriatric certification are better placed to handle older patients with dementia. As such, collecting information demographic profiles of the patients suffering from dementia, and previous reported cases of elder abuse and exploitation other care centers is essential to intervening.
There is a challenge in managing dementia patients as the symptoms do not manifest all the time, while there are unique circumstances for different cases. People with dementia may exhibit problematic behavior, but in most cases this is not random, especially when there are unmet needs. There is no one single approach that applies to all cases of patients with dementia, but there are strategies that can facilitate the management of the condition (Brodaty, Seeher, & Gibson, 2012). Care givers who spend time caring for dementia patients need to identify the extent to which the patients can function on their own as this affects their ability to cope. The goal of interventions targeting dementia is to reduce morbidity and the healthcare costs of the condition including improving the quality of life.
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