The two new nursing interventions that I learned this week at the Western Adult Day Health Care Center website are linked to the provision of hospice care and memory care. More precisely, these nursing interventions are the provision of support to hospice patients and their families and the conduction of excursions and physical exercise for adults with Alzheimer’s disease. These two interventions reveal that nurses have much more responsibilities than just control over the patients state of health.
The Western Adult Day Health Care Center in California provides its patients with palliative care. The goal of this care is to improve the quality of life and ease the suffering of people with complex and incurable illnesses. It was interesting to know that nurses in hospices provide not only medical care but also psychological help and communication with patients and their friends and relatives. For nurses, it is essential to be compassionate and be patient enough to let the patients and their family members express their feelings and emotions. Besides, communication with the family is crucial because it enables nurses to clearly explain what is going on and inform them of the prospects.
The second intervention is assistance to the adults with Alzheimer’s disease to perform physical exercises and excursions around the medical facility. It is a well-known fact that fine motor skills and overall physical activity have a strong positive effect on cognitive abilities. For the patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, physical exercises are essential because they help to decrease the development of the disease. Nurses should also conduct excursions to the newcomers and old patients. People with Alzheimer’s disease tend to forget the essential things, such as their home address. Thus, it is necessary to show them every day how to get, for example, to the bathroom in the health care center.
Reference
Western Adult Day Health Care Center. n.d. Web.