Introduction
Cognitive impairments like Dementia make living difficult for the elderly, lowering their quality of life (QOL) and necessitating highly trained nurses. Nurses should know how aging affects thinking and how Dementia can affect quality of life. As the global population ages, the high brain impairment rate, such as Dementia, becomes more critical. Dementia is neurodegenerative. It always evolves. It impairs memory, cognition, communication, self-care, and emotion. Dementia is the leading cause of elderly individuals becoming disabled. Hence, its full impact must be for better outcome preparations. The normal aging process will influence our cognitive functions, such as thinking and remembering, but not as much as disorders like Dementia. Awareness of age changes helps determine if cognitive decline is due to normal aging or mental impairment. Thus, understanding dementia symptoms and how they affect cognitive performance in the elderly is essential to providing timely care. Dementia affects an individual’s overall well-being, not just cognitive ability. Physical health, emotional health, relationships, and independence are all affected. These complex issues require a holistic strategy that addresses medical, emotional, social, and ecological factors. Nursing interventions are helpful for senior dementia patients and prevent QOL loss. By adapting care to individual needs, supporting freedom as long as it is safe, providing the most significant activities, and creating a welcoming atmosphere, nurses assist dementia patients live their best lives. We will discuss the cognitive changes that occur with normal aging, Dementia, how it affects older folks, and how nursing treatments can help patients with mental impairment. Knowing what affects dementia patients helps nurses improve their treatment.
Describe Typical Age-Related Changes
Memory is one area that has long been known to change as people age. We would also lose working memory and episodic memory speed. People often notice cognitive decline as they age. Mental speed slows with age, making it harder for elderly adults to think and act rapidly (Burks et al., 2021). Older persons may have weaker working memories. Working memory stores and temporarily changes information. Young adults may have modest recall memory loss of specific events and settings, which helps us remember past occurrences. We link memory and intelligence changes with age, which are typical and do not affect our daily routine. Older people may receive information slowly, work poorly, and forget things, but that does not necessarily mean they have Dementia. Age-related changes in mental thinking and memory are not invariably evidence of cognitive dysfunction or mental impairment. Knowing how the mind develops with age helps separate normal aging from disorders like Dementia. Then, they can better examine older people’s cognitive performance, comprehend the changes, and aid them when needed. Because cognitive changes are typical with age, working with adults, cognitive changes requires subtlety and assistance.
Describe the Selected Cognitive Disease (Dementia)
Dementia is a complicated brain problem that makes it hard to diagnose and treat, especially in people who are not Western and do not have much education. The systematic review looked at 44 studies focusing on cognitive tests for Dementia specific to different areas. The main focus was on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but other types of Dementia were also looked at. However, there was not much study on cognitive areas other than memory, and different kinds of Dementia were not looked into much. The low scope of research often hinders comprehensive assessment to diagnose Dementia among populations with less education (Franzen et al., 2019). This value of memory tests ignores other important cognitive aspects with relevance to the accuracy of the diagnosis and the tailored interventions. In the absence of a holistic approach to assessment, misdiagnosis, and underestimation of dementia prevalence occur, and this will be a problem in effective management strategies. The abovementioned challenges call for researchers and clinicians to broaden their examination field from memory assessment and consider other cognitive domains and dementia subtypes. Through the development of culturally sensitive and language-appropriate assessment tools combined with the conduct of rigorous cross-cultural validation studies, the technology for more accurate and complete dementia assessment strategies can be established.
Cultural and educational elements have a significant role in the assessment and diagnosis of Dementia. Thus, caregivers have to be creative enough in their approach when handling non-Western, low-educated patients. The studies examined in this review showed that the test performance of educated people was way below that of individuals with better qualifications. The conventional evaluation tools for educated people mostly appeared inappropriate for low-educated populations; therefore, the need for the validity and relevance of the cultural instruments was identified (Franzen et al., 2019). Cultural and educational backdrops that affect the test scores call for developing test instruments that are contextually suitable and meet the student’s needs. An examination of the tests with only black and white line drawings, for example, could be disadvantageous to low-educated people, showing the necessity of more accurate assessment by using colorful images or real-life objects. Making cultural and educational adjustments in the dementia assessment process requires the paradigm to be shifted to one that embraces the diversity of the population and provides culturally friendly evaluation methods. By understanding the different populations’ viewpoints and applying stringent cross-cultural/educational test adaptation rules, clinicians will ensure an accurate dementia assessment that is consistent across the varying cultural and educational contexts.
Discuss the Impact of Dementia on Older Adults
Dementia worsens cognitive functioning and affects the lives of senior citizens. An older person’s efficacy and physical impairment diminish most due to Alzheimer’s disease in particular. It affects cognition, memory, language, mental function, and spatial awareness. The disease makes people more oblivious to their environment, unable to communicate, make decisions, or manage their everyday lives. Statistics indicate that Alzheimer’s disease will spread rapidly. It might affect 150 million individuals by 2050, three times more than presently. Lisko et al. (2021) show how Dementia affects older people. Their brain difficulties can stem from simple academic duties like showering and dressing to more sophisticated ones like making decisions. Data-driven estimates show a public health calamity is coming, underlining the need for effective prevention initiatives. Dementia may have far-reaching effects. Therefore, complete care and protection are more important. If interventions targeted changeable elements, they could solve the dementia crisis for older persons and society. They can be used together. Early detection and treatment improve the results and well-being of illness patients.
Caregivers and healthcare providers are stressed by Dementia, which harms the patient. Due to the hard work and stress of dementia care, caregivers may develop anxiety, sadness, and other health issues. They may need help caring for their loved ones with other chores, which can lead to social marginalization and financial problems. Dementia patients typically cannot receive diagnosis, treatment, or long-term care from healthcare systems (Lisko et al., 2021). Along with Dementia, patients, caregivers, and the healthcare system are struggling. Caregiving stress can impair the caregiver’s physical and emotional health, increasing the risk of burnout and worsening dementia care. Additionally, healthcare systems may struggle to meet rising dementia service demand. If resources are unfairly distributed, nobody may get attention or support. Knowing how caregivers and healthcare systems affect Dementia and finding ways to enhance them is critical. Thus, Alzheimer’s caregivers should be supported and given skills, money should be invested in infrastructure and communities that benefit them, and policies should prioritize care and study. If caregiver requirements are met and healthcare services are improved, dementia patients and everyone will benefit.
Discuss the Role of Nursing Interventions to Address Cognitive Impairments
The nurses utilize person-centered methods to ensure the independence of people with Dementia and give them confidence in doing their best in activities. Touhy et al. (2019) emphasize that interventions must be specific and consider the many areas of an individual’s life, including likes, strengths, and capabilities. Person-centered care acknowledges that each person is unique and has their own experience with Dementia, which requires individualized care leading to a sense of empowerment and well-being. Person-centered care is fundamentally about treating every person with dignity regardless of their condition, and ensuring that their autonomy is respected (even if they have cognitive impairments) is crucial. The nurse offers people with Dementia the service of helping them to make decisions and plan their care. This allows them to feel in control and independent, which, in turn, contributes to an overall improvement in their quality of life. In this respect, the physician also considers the patient’s identity and senses while losing cognitive capabilities. Nurses are pretty instrumental in allowing persons with Dementia to maintain autonomy and preserve their dignity through a person-centered approach. Through nurses, the patients are endowed with the strength to manage their own lives by accepting the individuality of every human being. This is a factor that can help them live much longer and better.
To treat Dementia, the nurses must examine the person’s thinking, behavior, and capability of doing things. Touhy et al. (2019) point out that knowing and watching over a patient who has Dementia all the time is significant, and this can help in noticing any changes in the patient’s state. Through close observation of the person’s cognitive functions, behavioral signs, and physical abilities, nurses can identify the early signs of decline or complications, thus promptly offering the person the proper care and support. As symptoms of Dementia keep worsening and they alter, it is essential to administer and monitor the person regularly. Through monitoring the person’s behaviors, cognitive function, and functional state, nurses can see the dementia progression, which will help them to modify their treatments, stop the patient from physical actions like falling, wandering, or aggression, and increase the quality of their lives. This approach, therefore, plays a vital role in ensuring safety and improving the person’s health while at the same time minimizing the risks and negative consequences of Dementia. The nursing interventions of dementia care are tailored to the dynamic assessment and monitoring of the patients. This helps nurses provide detailed, patient-tailored care that immediately adjusts to the patient’s needs. Registered nurses also play a vital role in the quality of life for those living with Dementia as they monitor for changes in condition and respond promptly.
Conclusion
Dementia can heavily impact older people’s quality of life (QOL), reflected through changes in the ability to think, behave, and feel well. Persons with Dementia are more comprehensively managed by interventions that target person-centered care, teamwork, and ongoing support; these are the unavoidable areas of nursing. A nurse who works with older people with Dementia must know about the cognitive change that comes with aging, the particular effects of Dementia, and also the techniques that have been proven to help.
References
Burks, H. B., des Bordes, J. K. A., Chadha, R., Holmes, H. M., & Rianon, N. J. (2021). Quality of life assessment in older adults with Dementia: A systematic review. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 50(2), 103–110. https://doi.org/10.1159/000515317
Franzen, S., van den Berg, E., Goudsmit, M., Jurgens, C. K., van de Wiel, L., Kalkisim, Y., Uysal-Bozkir, Ö., Ayhan, Y., Nielsen, T. R., & Papma, J. M. (2019). A systematic review of neuropsychological tests for the assessment of Dementia in Non-Western, low-educated or illiterate populations. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 26(3), 331–351. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1355617719000894
Lisko, I., Kulmala, J., Annetorp, M., Ngandu, T., Mangialasche, F., & Kivipelto, M. (2021). How can Dementia and disability be prevented in older adults? Where are we today, and where are we going? Journal of Internal Medicine, 289(6), 807–830. https://doi.org/10.1111/joim.13227
Touhy, T. A., Boscart, V., Kathleen Freudenberger Jett, & McCleary, L. (2019). Ebersole and Hess’ Gerontological nursing & healthy aging. (4th ed.). Elsevier Canada, A Division Of Reed Elseviercanada, Ltd.
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