Case Study Of Dementia

Dementia is a difficult disease to understand and handle. A major problem involving these patients are caregivers that are not properly trained and educated to care for people with the disease resulting in issues such as neglect and abuse.

To better understand the patient, you should first understand the disease itself. According to Wayne, White, and Smith (2015), “dementia is caused when connections in the brain are lost due to inflammation, trauma, or disease and eventually the neurons die and dementia is the result.” Although some believe that dementia may be genetic, research suggests that it has more to do with your lifestyle, heredity, and environment. Some easy signs and symptoms of people developing dementia are memory loss, impaired judgment, faulty reasoning, and inappropriate behavior. These behaviors can be difficult and stressful for the people providing caring for them.

If caregivers of dementia patients are not

Most facilities that hire workers such as nurses and nursing assistants to take care of dementia patients don’t train their employees for the disease specifically. Without the knowledge of how to properly take care of these types of patients, employees become easily overwhelmed and stressed without the ability to cope. Some other reasons include poor work conditions, to many responsibilities, and lack of appreciation. Eriksson and Saveman (2002) discuss how burnout is a common problem for the nursing staff. Burnout then can lead to the staff member losing interest in as well as not showing consideration and/or despising the patient, leading to abuse and/or neglect. This is an issue that needs to be addressed by the human resources department. They need to make sure they are providing all the knowledgeable information needed starting on the first day of orientation and making sure they continue that education at mandatory in-services throughout the