Nursing Assignment on Cognitive Disorder and Dementia

This nursing assignment discusses cognitive disorder and dementia, their symptoms, and psychosocial treatments. It also includes the author's personal experience and challenges faced while caring for patients with cognitive impairment.

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Nursing assignment
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1NURSING ASSIGNMENT
1.
a. Cognitive disorder is a mental health condition that affects cognitive abilities of a person such
as learning, memory and perception.
No, I do not have any family member suffering from cognitive disorder. However, I have seen
patients with cognitive disorder in my clinical practice. As they are highly dependent on others
for daily life activities and they are prone to safety risk because of memory and cognitive
impairment, I feel very sad for such people.
b. Some of the difficulties that I faced in providing care to people with cognitive disability is that
due to memory problems, providing instruction to them was difficult. I had to closely monitor
the patient instead of giving instruction to ensure that the patient is safe. These people also have
high risk of injury because of cognitive impairment. I felt caring for such patients as a very
challenging activity. However, while caring for them, I learnt that had the patience to deal with
such patients.
If diagnostic test is available for Alzheimer’s disease, I would want to be tested. This is because I
have seen how people with Alzheimer’s disease suffer after the progression of disease. I would
like to detect any such problem in early phase so that I can take the right treatment for it.
2. One symptom that is present in dementia patient includes impaired memory. The person may
suffer from temporary memory loss and they may fail to understand the needs for current action
because of memory problems (Kales, Gitlin and Lyketsos, 2015).
Alzheimer’s disease is mainly causes due to damage to brain cells. Clumps of protein called
plaques build up and destroy brain cells (Kales, Gitlin and Lyketsos, 2015).
3. Psychosocial treatment for patients with dementia includes implementation of psychotherapies
based on behaviour-oriented approach or cognition oriented approach or stimulation oriented
approach (Teri, McKenzie and Coulter 2016). In addition, symptoms of cognitive loss can be
treated with drugs like Memantine and Vitamin E.
To provide for either Rivastigmine (Exelon) or donepezil (Aricept), I would like to know about
indications for use, contraindication and side-effects of either medication to prescribe it to the
patient.

2NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Reference:
Kales, H.C., Gitlin, L.N. and Lyketsos, C.G., 2015. Assessment and management of behavioral
and psychological symptoms of dementia. bmj, 350(7), p.h369.
Teri, L., McKenzie, G. and Coulter, C.A., 2016. Psychosocial Interventions for Older Adults
with Dementia and Their Caregivers. In Handbook of the Psychology of Aging (Eighth
Edition) (pp. 447-474).