Reflective Report - Dementia in Elderly Patient

REFLECTIVE REPORT – DEMENTIA IN ELDERLY PATIENT
INTRODUCTION
I am working as a healthcare provider who provides service to elder patients suffering
from dementia. As a health care provider, I think that my role is necessary in healthcare system
for prevention and management of healthcare condition of patients especially to those individuals
who are incapable of taking care of themselves. In this report I will share my experience of
providing care to an elder person with dementia using Gibb’s Reflective Cycle (Adeani & et. al.
2020). I have provided healthcare service to a 70 years old person who is suffering from
dementia. It is a kind of syndrome in which deterioration in thinking, memory and behaviour of
individual take place (Midtbust & et. al., 2018). Not only this, in this syndrome ability of person
to perform daily task or activities also degrade.
REFLECTION
Description of the situation
As a healthcare provider my main focus is to provide care to elder people with age related
problems. One of my patients who is 70 years old is suffering from dementia. But he is a bit
aggressive when it comes to change within his daily routine life or activities and many times
even suffer from anxiety. But he does not like any kind of change and many times due to these
changes he has an anxiety attack. This incident occurred at the time of diagnosis. That time his
dementia was not diagnosed and I had no idea about his aggressiveness and anxiety issues. Due
to lack in coordination with other team members his diagnosis got delayed for 1 week. As a
result, he got a bit irritated and started reacting aggressively, did not cooperate and was not ready
to take healthcare service from me. But after communicating with him and completing the
diagnosis soon he got normal. But when he was asked to get hospitalized, he got an anxiety
attack and again started reacting aggressively. Initially I had no idea why he was behaving in
such a manner but after communicating with his wife, slowly I understood that he was not happy
with hospitalization decision and got an anxiety attack.

Feeling of the experience
I am a team player and have patience but, in this situation, I was feeling a bit stressed out
about this situation which made him more upset. It was becoming a bit difficult for me to reduce
his anxiety and make him realize importance of getting hospitalized. At that time, I was only
thinking of ways to encourage him so that he can understand that importance of getting
hospitalized and ways in which effective treatment can be provided to him. That time I focused
upon being patient and calm. Being calm helped me in getting relaxed and focused upon creating
a clam environment where only me and his wife were present. I gave a brief overview and
knowledge about disease to his wife and them made him calm down.
Evaluation of experience
This was a good but a challenging experience because it made me realize how important
being calm and patient is when we are dealing with dementia patients. This is because when
patients sense stress and tension of healthcare providers then in such case their anxiety can
increase but staying calm can help in development of a supportive environment which further
help patient to ease themselves and reduce their anxiety level (Jansen & et. al. 2017). I also
realized that patience helps dealing with aggressive patients in a much better manner (Adeani &
et. al. 2020). Some of the main positive things of my experience where I understood importance
of family members in care plan, importance o remains calm and patient while dealing with older
patients with dementia. But there some negative things associated with my experience as well i.e.
due to lack of coordination in team members diagnosis was not done on time which frustrated the
patient and increased his aggressiveness.
Analysis of the situation
After analysing this situation, I think that there were some things that did not go well and
could have been improved. Team work is one of the most important things when dealing with
provision of healthcare service to patients, especially elder patients suffering from disease like
dementia. Team work not only helps in providing required healthcare service to patients but it
also helps in enhancing satisfaction level of patients as well (Chen & Lin, 2019). In this case
well effective team work and coordination between other team members would have helped in
early and timely diagnosis which would have further helped patient in having patience (Jansen &
et.al, 2017). In this situation I did not expect such kind of lack of coordination between my other
team members. This lack of coordination resulted in delay in diagnosis which further resulted in