This is the 3612th article of Da Medical Care
"Lao Wang, we measured your vital signs." "Okay". "How's it going"? "Your metrics are all good". "That's fine, thanks".
This is a fragment of our daily conversation between nurses and patients, which seems very ordinary, in fact, although we tell the patient the number of each indicator and finally say "very good", the patient may only understand the last few words, or may ask and do not know what it means, because he is an elderly patient diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. We tried our best to cooperate with him so that he felt that he understood everything we said, and he also thanked us happily, and the scene was very warm.
Yes, Alzheimer's disease, commonly known as Alzheimer's disease, is the most common type of dementia in the elderly, and many places have replaced the title of Alzheimer's disease with dementia, reflecting respect for this group.
For dementia patients, we need to take care of people from many aspects, including health education, dietary guidance, leisure therapy, cognitive function training, life self-care ability training, emotional support and so on. Many people feel that the physical care of dementia patients is very important, and ignore emotional support, or do not talk to them well, feel that they can't understand what we are saying anyway, do not listen to what they are saying, think they are talking nonsense. But we have to understand that the old people, although they have this disease, will have an intuition about the attitude of everyone around them, and friendliness and perfunctory or impatience can be felt.
As caregivers, we need to communicate with our hearts and learn to talk to the elderly with dementia. Below I introduce some tips for you to learn and reference.
1. Keep smiling and keep each other on a physical plane for eye contact. Introduce yourself frequently, and you can call them by their honorific titles with each greeting. Be friendly, attentive, thoughtful, speak slowly, use gestures in conjunction with gestures, ask questions simply and openly, and give patients plenty of time to think.
2. Empathy puts itself in the patient's position, to understand the patient's possible thoughts and feelings, and to learn to listen. Use intuition to think about what the patient is saying or feeling, and connect those words to understand.
3. Agree to let the other person know that you understand the thoughts and emotions conveyed behind the message, and do not express objections or arguments.
4. People with dementia often repeat their own words, especially if they want to express their views. Repetition is a useful way for them to express what they know and learn new things. Repetition is the only way a patient can communicate, an opportunity for caregivers to connect, and an opportunity to discover their deeper thoughts through superficial phenomena.
5. Set up the same scenario to evoke memories. Using the same environmental layout can help patients remember some people and places; try to stay in that position and communicate with people around them as much as possible when arranging seats.
6. Music can be a communication beyond language, and caregivers can communicate with patients with singing and music.
For the elderly with dementia, the emotional support of the caregiver is very important, we should use comfort, encouragement, suggestion and other methods to enlighten according to the patient's abnormal behavior and bad emotional performance, talk more with the patient, increase emotional support, so that the elderly with dementia feel warm.
Author: Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University
Tang Xiaohong is in charge of nurse
Audit: Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University
Xi Yan, Shen Jun