Caregiving may include help with one or more activities important for daily living such as bathing and dressing, paying bills, shopping and providing transportation. It also may involve emotional support and help with managing a chronic disease or disability.
To be a great caregiver, you need to have the desire to learn all you can about performing the duties of a caregiver, the desire to perform those senior care duties to the best of your ability, and the desire to deliver care coupled with compassion.
Some of the greatest challenges of caring for a loved one with dementia are the personality and behavior changes that often occur. You can best meet these challenges by using creativity, flexibility, patience, and compassion. It also helps to not take things personally and maintain your sense of humor.
Person-centered care for people with dementia emphasizes the importance of caring for all aspects of a person's well-being--social, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs in addition to diagnoses and physical and medical needs.
In his theorising about personhood in people living with dementia, Kitwood (1997) identified five psychological needs experienced by people living with dementia, namely the need for comfort, attachment, identity, occupation and inclusion.
There are four commonly accepted principles of health care ethics that providers follow to ensure optimal patient safety: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice.
Caregivers often find they have less time for themselves and other family members. They often spend so much time on caregiving duties that they end up sacrificing the things they enjoy, like hobbies or vacations. Or, they have trouble balancing work schedules around caregiving. Emotional and physical stress.
Caregiver burnout is a state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion. Stressed caregivers may experience fatigue, anxiety and depression. Some ways to prevent burnout include joining a caregiver support group and using respite care services.
These five principles are safety, dignity, independence, privacy, and communication. Nurse assistants keep these five principles in mind as they perform all of their duties and actions for the patients in their care.
The principles of care include choice, dignity, independence, partnership, privacy, respect, rights, safety, equality and inclusion, and confidentiality.
The model proposes five dimensions of caregiving Availability, Sensitivity, Acceptance, Co-operation and Family Membership, each of which is associated with a corresponding developmental benefit for the child.
This can entail anything from providing a simple wake-up call to providing assistance with personal hygiene needs, bathing, dressing, grooming, incontinence care, and whatever else the patient requires to have a refreshing start to their day.
When writing care notes, they should be concise and quick to the point. They shouldn't contain any type of jargon, abbreviations or acronyms. This could lead to confusion and misunderstandings when going through notes. Ensure that the notes are easy to read and understand for everyone involved in the client's care.
Signs and symptoms
The four A's of Alzheimer's disease are: amnesia, aphasia, apraxia, and agnosia.
When communicating with an individual experiencing memory loss, remember the 3 Rs — RIGHT, REASSURE, REDIRECT.
The 7 'A's of Dementia, or anosognosia, amnesia, aphasia, agnosia, apraxia, altered perception and apathy, represent changes that can happen in dementia patients because of damage to their brain(opens in a new tab).
Being active, eating a better diet, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, keeping normal blood pressure, controlling cholesterol and having low blood sugar in middle age may all lower the chances of developing conditions such as Alzheimer's disease later in life, research suggests.