Project home4. Problem Scenario
The amount of patients with dementia is increasing every year, and care facilities have limited space and resources to provide the necessary help for persons with dementia (PwDs) who need it. For our specific case we are taking a hypothetical Dutch care facility as our setting. This care facility is suffering from staff shortages, they have a limited amount of nurses who themselves have a limited amount of time, energy, and patience when caring for their patients. Many nurses note that due to the staff shortages, they have to work longer and harder hours leading to them being unable to fully physically and mentally recover after a work day. This lowers their overall energy and patience, which in turn decreases the quality of care for the patients as the nurses can become more easily frustrated, careless, and/or forgetful.
PwDs often suffer from confusion, loneliness, and feeling like a burden to their family before moving to a care home. They would like to have someone to talk to who is patient and understanding. In a care home, some of the nurses are there to keep the PwDs company throughout the day. However, the nurses have many other responsibilities and patients, so they are unable to spend as much time with the PwD as the PwD would like. Due to the PwD's confusion, they might repeatedly ask the nurses or caretakers questions which can be frustrating for those answering the questions. Additionally, with the increased frustrations of the nurses, the time they spend with a PwD is of lower quality and might lead to higher tensions, instead of calm and reassuring interactions, possibly leaving a PwD feeling like a burden, sad, and lonely. This is not an improvement from their feelings before being in a care home.
Let's take an example PwD in the care home: Margaret (see 1.a.3: Personas). When she wakes up, she is unsure of the day's schedule making her feel disoriented and unsure of what to do. She feels lonely and would like to see some of the other patients to get some social interaction, but she is also anxious about meeting (new) people because she doesn't want to forget someone's name which she has noticed happening more often recently. She calls her nurse Pedro and he comes to pick up Margaret and takes her to the common room where he introduces her to another patient and he leaves them there to hang out until the next appointment while he goes to take care of some other patients.
Pedro comes to remind her of her appointments throughout the day, which Margaret appreciates.
At the end of the day she returns to her room and feels satisfied with the day's activities, but wishes that she could process or record her thoughts and memories in some way as she is afraid of forgetting this nice day. Sometimes Pedro has time to sit and talk with her about the day before she goes to sleep which helps her feel calm and at peace.