Care

What is dementia?

Used to describe conditions that result in the progressive loss of mental ability which affects the person’s ability to remember, learn, understand, communicate and reason. There are also often changes in behaviour and a gradual loss of skills needed to carry out ordinary daily activities.

Two common types of dementia exist:

• Alzheimer’s disease or dementia with Alzheimer’s type (DAT)
• Multi-infarct dementia or vascular dementia.

Common symptoms and observation of someone affected by dementia:

• Confusion as to where the person is
• Mistake day for night, for example getting up at 1 am to start the day.
• Wandering outside in the garden or in the street.
• Confusion about personal circumstances, how old they are, who is still alive.
• Restlessness and repetitive behaviour, pacing up and down, picking at their clothing.
• Distress, tears and angry outbursts.
• Withdrawal, not communicating/forgetting names of items
• Not recognising the person who cares for them every day.
• Verbal or physical attack.
• Display poor short-term memory.

What we do at Anse la raie Care Home to meet the needs?

Physical Care

Being the carer, we help these people with intimate physical tasks and talking to them explaining to them what they are doing so that this creates less confusion in their mind

Eating and Drinking

Being their carer, we look after what they eat and drink. As they often tend to forget that they just had their meal so they might ask for more and others might refuse to eat when given food saying that they have just eaten.

Mealtimes

We make sure that meals are served on time.

Focus on the person’s remaining skills

We let them do what they still know about

Physical environment

We have those infrastructures which will help our residents do some physical activities to keep their body interact with their brain.

What is Respite care?

Respite care is a planned temporary care provided to child or adult.

What is Palliative care?

As defined by WHO, Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.

Palliative care:

• provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms;
• affirms life and regards dying as a normal process;
• intends neither to hasten or postpone death;
• integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care;
• offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death;
• offers a support system to help the family cope during the patients illness and in their own bereavement;
• uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated;
• will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of illness;
• is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications.

Source: https://www.who.int/cancer/palliative/definition/en/