The care of dementia patients in hospitals has been found to benefit from staff knowing the five most important things a person needs in order to be reassured and comfortable during their stay.
Short-handed as the ‘Top 5’, the tool is now being implemented across the Northern NSW Local Health District, starting with Lismore Base Hospital.
The initiative, which coincides with national Dementia Awareness Month, is designed to help medical staff working with carers to tap into the latter group’s knowledge and expertise. The beneficiaries are patients, carers, and clinicians.
NNSWLHD Nurse Practitioner Psychogeriatrics, Anne Moehead, said LBH is implementing the Top 5 program across the Health Service to help personalise hospital care for patients with memory and thinking problems.
The Top 5 questions revolve around -
- things or situations that may cause the person with dementia distress
- ways in which the person can be reassured and calmed
- any set routines that help comfort the person
- any repetitive questions or recurring issues experienced by the person that may need specific answers, whether or not there may be someone who the person will call out for
- the non-verbal signs that the person may use in order to meet their personal needs.
Ms Moehead said that by having a greater understanding of what it is like for a person to live with dementia, a community can help support them to live a higher quality of life with meaning, purpose and value.
This year’s Dementia Awareness Month theme is “Creating a Dementia-Friendly Nation”.
Ms Moehead added LBH is also rolling out the Care of the Confused Hospitalised Older Person (CHOPs) program. The goal is to understand and improve the experiences and outcomes of confused older people (70 years and over, and Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders over 45 years).
“The CHOPs program is a systematic approach to early identify older people presenting to hospital with confusion, and to establish the cause of their confusion in order to manage their symptoms effectively and improve their hospital stay,” she said.
