Living Well with Dementia Series

Chapter 1-What is Dementia?

This first topic explains what dementia is and what is happening to the brain of a Person With Dementia (PWD). Using cancer diagnosis and care as an example, staff members will be able to identify the need to treat dementias as distinct diseases of the brain, with predictable stages and behaviors.
Five questions about dementia every caregiver needs to understand about care and also to explain the dementia disease process to families are discussed. These five questions address the majority of complaints and concerns from family members and guides them to understand the disease is destroying their loved one’s brain and therefore is the causation of decline in their loved one and not a failure of care.
Chapter 2-The Lobes of the Brain

Dementias attack and destroy the brain during the course of the disease. As each lobe of the brain becomes damaged, the Person With Dementia will display different and unique behaviors indicating which lobe of the brain is being affected. Learn the lobes and what they should do and what they begin to do once cellular tructures, neurotransmitters and normal function are impaired.
The behaviors displayed by a PWD are actually clues to where the disease is and tell us what to expect next. Knowing these changes in brain function helps prepare care plans that incorporate the anticipated decline. Staff members will begin to understand the behaviors are not purposeful but are a result of brain damage.
Chapter 3-What is Memory and How Does it Work?

The doctor said, “She will lose her memory.” But what does that mean? This session will explain what memory is, how it functions and what occurs as the brain suffers damage from dementia. Caregivers will also learn how to draw a basic file cabinet to explain the disease process to families.

Chapyter 4- The 9 most Common forms of Dementia

Nine dementias account for 98 percent of all dementias. Recognizing the signs and features of each dementia helps family and professional caregivers recognize and identify which form or forms of dementia their loved one is displaying.
Knowing the dementia, the resident has allows us to provide for better care, teaches our caregivers to recognize and understand behaviors associated with particular dementias and makes for care plans that allow for decline, falls, fractures and UTIs.

Chapter 5-Staging the Person with Dementia

Understanding how dementias move through the brain and cause changes in behavior allows families and professionals to determine how much damage the brain has suffered. Identifying a person’s stage of dementia means knowing what behaviors or declines will follow, the amount of time the Person With Dementia is expected to be in each stage, how much brain tissue is remaining, and what to care plan for next.
Since People With Dementia don’t look physically ill until Stage Six of the Disease, the tools give us a better picture of the brain damage and resulting behaviors than relying on long term memory social skills.

Chapter 6-What are the ADLs and how do they Change Care?

This session goes into detail about the ADLs, when we develop them, the complete steps and subsets of each one. At the end of the day, all we actually do for Persons With Dementia is their ADLs. Knowing how to do them correctly means less friction, less combative behavior, and a better outcome for residents and staff.

Chapter 7-What do they want? What does that Behavior mean?

The lobes of the brain are each responsible for certain behaviors or reflexive actions. Knowing the normal function of each lobe and the behaviors or changes that occur as the dementia progresses, allows caregivers to determine behaviors which indicate the disease’s progression, versus behaviors which indicate infection, stroke, anxiety, or depression.
This session includes which behaviors are unique to specific dementias, and how to recognize and address challenging behaviors, and understand verbal, anxiety, aggression, depression, pain, scatological, and sexual behaviors.

Chapter 8-Communication in Dementia

A Person With Dementia is suffering from a terminal brain disease. Understanding how memory works, knowing the type of dementia your resident has, along with the stage of the disease, allows caregivers to target conversations to the memories that continue to function. Using this skill allows for interactions with old memory and can lead families and professional caregivers to new insights into their loved one’s younger life.
Chapter 9-Pain and other Assessments in a Person with Dementia

Dementia professionals use a variety of tools to determine decline and remaining function in Persons With Dementia. Specific tools help us give physicians, nurses and caregiving staff a better picture of what is happening to the resident. Assessing for depression, anxiety, ADLs, IADLs, Pain, etc., keeps arguments out of the doctor’s office and helps us to assist families in understanding the disease process.
Pain causes an estimated 50 percent of the behaviors in a Person With Dementia. Learn how to assess, plan and provide for pain treatment, including the use of narcotic medications.

Chapter 10-Approach, Conversations and the Five Senses

This session is for all staff who interact with residents. Understanding changes in vision, hearing and the damage to the brain means learning to adjust our behavior to the abilities of a Person With Dementia. Recognizing how to approach a Person With Dementia, how to have a conversation based on the Person With Dementia’s capacity, and how to adjust our voice pitch and tone, body language and how Fight, Flight, Flee or Fawn are triggered by our behaviors are covered in this session.

Chapter 11-Care at the End of Life

Understanding how people die is a difficult but necessary topic. Recognizing the signs and behaviors as persons enter into the process of Actively Dying helps us know what is normal as the body slowly ceases its function. Grief, guilt, and the reality of loss will be discussed.

Chapter 12-Caregiver Stress and Compassion Fatigue

This session will cover a variety of stress relief techniques for caregivers. It also includes several self-tests for caregivers to use to measure their stress levels, their selfcompassion, burnout, and their compassion fatigue.

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