Elderly Care: Meeting Client Needs

Introduction

The proper care of the elderly is required so that they are able to live a comfortable and healthy life by coping with major health issues and anxiety. In this assignment, the client need of an 81year old individual is to be identified along with the aims and objectives regarding the person's care. The pedagogy to be used in achieving the care aim so that self-determination, independence and purposeful activity for the client are met is to be discussed. For those seeking guidance, resources such as healthcare dissertation help can be invaluable. The resources, way the care is to be delivered and evaluation of the care is also to be explained.

Client Needs

The case presented is of a client named Mrs M who is 81-years-old and found to be living alone. According to the NMC Code, the personal details of the service users are to be protected to ensure the person's safety and avoid the individual from getting abused (NMC, 2015). Thus, the pseudonym M is to be used to identify the client to protect her identity. She is reported to have forgotten her name and her children’s name along with often found to get lost when driving back from someplace to her home. Her family also found her to be untidy along with reduced weight. She often reported forgetting to take her meals as well as experience difficulty in speaking at times. Thus, the family admitted her to the mental health ward in the hospital to ensure proper care is provided to help her cope with the health issues. The people suffering from dementia often show symptoms such as reduced concentration, memory issues, behaviour changes, inability to do regular tasks, inability to communicate and others. This is because in dementia the brain cells which control thinking and cognitive activity are damaged (Livingston et al. 2017). The DSM-5 is used for analysing patients suffering from dementia and the patients if show memory issues, cognitive problem which interferes with their independence and improper behaviour it is diagnosed that the patient is suffering from dementia (Luck et al. 2017). On analysing the signs of Mrs M under the DSM-5 criteria it is found that she is suffering from dementia and requires immediate care assistance from mental health professionals.

Rationale

In the UK, it is reported that 850,000 people are already affected by dementia and the number is going to rise to 1 million by 2025. Nearly, 1 in 6 individuals above the age of 80 is suffering dementia. In addition, 70% of people in the UK accessing care in care homes are suffering from major health issue such as dementia (alzheimers.org.uk, 2019). This indicates that most of the people suffering from dementia are increasing at a faster rate and therefore effective intervention to be discussed is required to lower the prevalence of the disease. In 2017, dementia became the leading health issue in the UK resulting to cause nearly 12.7% deaths (ons.gov.uk, 2018). Thus, intervention regarding dementia is beneficial so that the way effective actions to be taken for protecting service users from death can be understood in turn improving the health scenario of UK and assist individuals led a healthy life.

Aims

To allow Mrs M to be able to improve her memory so that she can remember her name and children’s name as well as her way home

To help Mrs M develop better ability to communicate through sign language

To assist Mrs M to develop efficiency to take her own care

To make Mrs M have the ability to eat and execute daily chores such as cleaning and bathing

SMART Objectives

To make Mrs M control her cognitive and memory ability

Pedagogy

The simulation training method is to be used for helping the nurses adapt and accomplish the determined aim and objectives mentioned regarding the patient whose case study is presented. As mentioned by Adib-Hajbaghery and Sharifi (2017), simulation training is the method in which nursing students are trained in a virtual environment to perform activities that mimic the real-life environment. This informs that nurses caring for Mrs M would be able to understand the way their determined actions are going to help in accomplishing the objectives without compromising on the well-being of the patient. The simulation training is beneficial as it helps to get immediate feedback (Crimlisk et al. 2017). This indicates that the training would be effective to ensure care for Mrs M as the nurses would be able to access feedback regarding the way care approaches they have determined to be given to Mrs M is going to impact in resolving her social and health issues. As argued by Dreier-Wolfgramm et al. (2016), simulation training is beneficial as it helps to retain knowledge and develop better insight regarding information or actions. This is because nurses in the training are able to develop an understanding regarding the way their determined action for particular patients acts as weakness and strength. This, in turn, makes them aware of the way the services are to be provided in real-life so that the weaknesses are avoided to ensure better care for the patients. It indicates that nurses would be able to determine through simulation training how effective sign language training would be for Mrs M and in which cases they are to compromise their actions to offer the training to ensure all the learning needs of Mrs M is achieved to make her communicate without hindrance. In addition, simulation training would lead nurses to take and determine actions of care in the virtual environment (Jakobsen et al. 2018). This would lead nurses any risk to be identified and resolved that may be faced by Mrs M when the actual care is delivered to her.

Resources

Hospital bed

Psychiatrist

Sign language interpreter and teacher

Multi-disciplinary team

Assistive technology such as remainder devices, locator devices and others

Service providers or carers

Medications such as Rivastigmine

Programme Delivery

On admission of Mrs M to the hospital, the mental health practitioners are to be involved to diagnose the health condition of Mrs M. This is because proper health diagnosis leads the health practitioners to identify the disease from which the patient is suffering from as well as determine their medical needs to be fulfilled (Watson et al. 2018). After diagnosis, the nurses along with the health professionals are to include Multi-disciplinary team to determine the types of care to be provided to Mrs M and the way they are to be delivered to ensure improved health of the patient. This is because Multi-disciplinary team include wide number of professionals from different field who are experienced to ensure each need of the patient is effectively fulfilled in the right way through delivery of proper care support (Smith et al. 2018). Moreover, the nurses are to establish communication with Mrs M and her family members to develop the care plan. This is because inclusion of patients and their family members in care plan leads the nurses make patients have the independence to make decision regarding their own care and understand the way person-centred care as per the preferred opinions of the patients is to be provided to ensure satisfactory care and improved well-being of the service users (Puurveen et al. 2018). After the discussion, the final care plan is to be developed to offer care in meeting the care aims and objectives for Mrs M.

Evaluation

The feedback method is to be used to evaluate the impact of the intended actions for the Mrs M. This is because through feedback method the nurses and health professionals are able to understand the level of satisfaction regarding the care provided to them and the further changes are to be made to ensure better quality care (Katwa et al. 2018). The health assessment method is to be used for determining the impact of intervention made for Mrs M. This is because health assessment allowed understanding whether or the health of the patient is improved after the care to ensure the intervention provided are effective for the patient to ensure their healthy living (Kosteniuk et al. 2016).

Conclusion

The above discussion informs that healthcare intervention is to be made to treatment dementia for an 81-year-old patient named Mrs M. The aims include resolving memory and cognitive issues of Mrs M along with improving her ability to communicate so that she is able to live a purposeful life by managing her mental illness. The use of simulation training is to be made to teach nurses regarding the best care delivery can be achieved. The feedback method and health assessment method is to be used for evaluating the impact of care for Mrs M.

References

Adib-Hajbaghery, M. and Sharifi, N., 2017. Effect of simulation training on the development of nurses and nursing students' critical thinking: A systematic literature review. Nurse education today, 50, pp.17-24.

Crimlisk, J.T., Krisciunas, G.P., Grillone, G.A., Gonzalez, R.M., Winter, M.R., Griever, S.C., Fernandes, E., Medzon, R., Blansfield, J.S. and Blumenthal, A., 2017. Emergency airway response team simulation training: a nursing perspective. Dimensions of Critical Care Nursing, 36(5), pp.290-297.

Dreier-Wolfgramm, A., Homeyer, S., Beyer, A., Kirschner, S., Oppermann, R.F. and Hoffmann, W., 2016. Impact of interprofessional education for medical and nursing students using simulation training and a training ward: a German pilot study. J Health Educ Res Dev, 4(4), p.200.

Jakobsen, R.B., Gran, S.F., Grimsmo, B., Arntzen, K., Fosse, E., Frich, J.C. and Hjortdahl, P., 2018. Examining participant perceptions of an interprofessional simulation-based trauma team training for medical and nursing students. Journal of interprofessional care, 32(1), pp.80-88.

Katwa, A.P., Jenner, C., MacDonald, K. and Barnett, N., 2018. Improving advance care planning for care home residents with dementia: Evaluation of simulation training for care home workers. Dementia, p.1471301218788137.

Kosteniuk, J.G., Morgan, D.G., Seitz, D., O'Connell, M.E., Kirk, A., Stewart, N.J. and Holroyd-Leduc, J., 2016. A Community-Based Participatory Research Approach To Dementia Care Best Practices In Rural Primary Health Care Teams. Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, 12(7), pp.218-219.

Livingston, G., Sommerlad, A., Orgeta, V., Costafreda, S.G., Huntley, J., Ames, D., Ballard, C., Banerjee, S., Burns, A., Cohen-Mansfield, J. and Cooper, C., 2017. Dementia prevention, intervention, and care. The Lancet, 390(10113), pp.2673-2734.

Luck, T., Then, F.S., Schroeter, M.L., Witte, V., Engel, C., Loeffler, M., Thiery, J., Villringer, A. and Riedel-Heller, S.G., 2017. Prevalence of DSM-5 mild neurocognitive disorder in dementia-free older adults: results of the population-based LIFE-adult-study. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 25(4), pp.328-339.

Puurveen, G., Baumbusch, J. and Gandhi, P., 2018. From family involvement to family inclusion in nursing home settings: A critical interpretive synthesis. Journal of family nursing, 24(1), pp.60-85.

Smith, T., Cross, J., Poland, F., Clay, F., Brookes, A., Maidment, I., Penhale, B., Laidlaw, K. and Fox, C., 2018. Systematic review investigating multi-disciplinary team approaches to screening and early diagnosis of dementia in primary care–what are the positive and negative effects and who should deliver it?. Current Alzheimer Research, 15(1), pp.5-17.

Watson, R., Bryant, J., Sanson-Fisher, R., Mansfield, E. and Evans, T.J., 2018. What is a ‘timely’diagnosis? Exploring the preferences of Australian health service consumers regarding when a diagnosis of dementia should be disclosed. BMC health services research, 18(1), p.612.