Nursing Practice Experience: Alzheimer's Disease Management Kit Report

This report details the implementation of an Alzheimer's Disease Management Kit within a dementia unit, focusing on the author's experience as a preceptor. The report begins with an introduction to Alzheimer's disease, its impact, and the need for improved management strategies. It then outlines the incident that prompted the implementation of the kit, including a case study of a 67-year-old woman with memory impairment. The report discusses the challenges in managing Alzheimer's disease, current management practices, and the rationale for adopting the Alzheimer's Disease Management Kit (ADMK). The ADMK is described as a mobile and computer application designed to connect patients with caregivers, facilitate sensory monitoring, medication reminders, and mental activity exercises. The report further explores the stakeholders involved, including patients, healthcare caregivers, and IT experts. It details the tasks involved in implementing the ADMK, the resources required, and the methods used to measure changes in patient outcomes. Awareness strategies, such as early engagement, awareness campaigns, and training, are also discussed. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of the ADMK in improving patient care and quality of life.

Running head: NURSING 1
Nursing Assignment
Student Name
Institution

NURSING 2
Introduction
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurological chronic illness that requires high monitoring
and management to ensure a good quality of health and low medication cost. Alzheimer’s
disease patients are always pushed with the need to manage various activities such as memory
functioning and medication to ensure the quality of health. The management of Alzheimer’s
disease requires interprofessional to foster medication and assessment or monitoring that is
necessary. The main focus of many health care systems is the Alzheimer’s disease among older
people. Older people with dementia require high patient care that assists in the management,
monitoring, and assessment of patient mental health. This necessitates efforts into improvement
of Alzheimer’s disease monitoring and management ways to help patients. The following paper,
therefore, outlines improvement of Alzheimer’s disease patient’s health through Alzheimer’s
disease management kit.
Alzheimer’s disease incident
The incident of the Alzheimer’s disease occurred at my work place when a 67 years old
woman was brought to the dementia ward for evaluation with a suspected condition of memory
impairment. The woman was well-groomed with friendly look and upon test the neurological
result was normal. Speech evaluation shows paraphasic characterized with vague referents such
as stuff or things words. The woman could pronounce her name clearly when asked but could
not remember her age or birthday correctly. The normal test for neurological performance, the
woman scored below average. The woman met the level of probable Alzheimer’s disease with
complete supervision. The woman needs monitoring every time for her safety where there was
need for proper Alzheimer’s disease management strategy.

NURSING 3
Implementing Alzheimer’s disease management and monitoring have many different challenges
that require addressing to improve health. Firstly, the increasing number of older patients
developing the disease has caused a worrying trend in the health system that requires proper
management. According to Tu, Jaakkimainen and Butt (2013), the high number of patients are
increasing pressure on the available health care resources and facilities that require improvement.
Secondly, the new patients that are being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease require much
attention that is not currently sufficient enough to help patients. Thirdly, lack of the necessary
information to manage the health of many patients is putting caregivers on the edge. This
prompts the need for management that also requires a huge number of health practitioners to
carry out the exercise (Manuel et al., 2014).
Current Alzheimer’s disease management
Alzheimer’s disease monitoring requires various systems to come into play as highlighted
by Greene and Hibbard (2012). Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic disease that requires effective
monitoring for improvement of care for newly diagnosed patients. Monitoring a patient's health
outcome is another monitoring aspect that is highly required for the effective management of the
disease. Monitoring of patient health requires continuous medication and assessment that
involves many health professionals to conduct. According to Vegesna, Tran, Angelaccio, and
Arcona (2017), management of the health of Alzheimer’s disease patient requires many different
health professionals that are made easy when the patient has a monitoring kit.
Many different strategies enable patient’s self-management hence better patient outcome.
Firstly, according to Dixon, Ward, Smith, Holmes, and Mahadeva (2016), advocating for patient
self-awareness program that takes into consideration of patient’s various health factors such as

NURSING 4
weight, physical activities, nutrition, and personal care skills. Patient portal registration where
the patient is allowed to register into various health management systems that allows them to
learn more about their health management skills (Yazar, Yazar, Demir, Özdemir, Çankaya, &
Enginyurt, 2018).
Recommended for dementia unit
The recommended best practice is the development and usage of Alzheimer’s disease
management kit that allows the patient to get assistance from caregivers at any time. Many
different patient self-management platforms are currently in under research but the Alzheimer’s
disease self-management platform that includes application with many different Alzheimer’s
disease management aspects (Cavallo, Aquilano & Arvati, 2015). Firstly, Alzheimer’s disease
management kit (ADMK) is mobile and computer application that allows the patient to connect
with health caregivers hence easy management. The system works together with health
caregivers for information provision and continuous improvement of the health of patients.
Secondly, the management includes application software that has interfaces that allow sensory,
medication and monitoring of mental activities of dementia patients. Lastly, the system has a
database that allows users to register and perform various tasks with the help of caregivers within
the mobile device (Stavropoulos, Meditskos, & Kompatsiaris, 2017).
Alzheimer’s disease self-management kit or system is important for some reasons.
Firstly, the application allows patients to get information with ease and within the shortest time
possible display patient information to caregivers. Secondly, the application allows Alzheimer’s
disease patients to connect to health caregivers without having to travel to the hospital. Thirdly,
the application enables patients to perform some mental exercise aiming at slowing down mental

NURSING 5
loss. Fourthly, the management kit provides the patient with information that acts as a reminder
for memory activities. The patient can access information that is regarding the health care on
Alzheimer’s disease. Lastly, the kit will help improve a patient’s health outcomes as the kit will
manage and monitor health with caregivers (Greene & Hibbard, 2012).
Stakeholders within the self-management system
There are many different stakeholders in the online Alzheimer’s disease management
platform for improving management and monitoring. Firstly, patients are the major stakeholder
in the platform as they will be the main beneficiary of the platform. Dementia patients will use
the kit and provide various health data to allow caregivers to manage patient health with ease.
Besides, patients will also use the kit to determine their memory performance, sensation, and
medications. Patients are also the key users of the system that will use the platform to manage
their health status (Garavand, Mohseni, Asadi, Etemadi, Moradi-Joo & Moosavi, 2016).
Secondly, health caregivers are another set stakeholder that will form part of the
management kit as they provide the information for the development of the platform and also
give patient information. Various health practitioners that include nurses assist patients; family
caregivers provide various assistance to dementia patients. Moreover, pharmacists provide
information that is necessary for dementia progression medications. Nutritionists help provides
advice on various nutrition aspects that help maintain mental health and other neurological
activities (Grindrod, Li & Gates, 2014).
Thirdly, information technologist (IT experts) is also key stakeholders in the Alzheimer’s
disease management kit as they are people tasked to develop the kit for patients. The information
technologists also maintain the system by updating software that ensures the security of patients’

NURSING 6
information is safe. Securing patient’s information and data is important for future improvement
of the health system and programs. IT experts are main players in ensuring that this information
does not fall into bad hands (Postema, Peeters & Friele, 2012).
Tasks invoved in new practice
Development and usage of Alzheimer’s disease self-management system require various
tasks and resources to meet its expected outputs. Firstly, tasks that the management kit will
perform include patient information processing, health care assistance, knowledge management,
assessment, sensors, and medication. Patient information processing involves the management
and processing of patient information that is uploaded by users in hospitals or at home. This task
involves the processing of information such as mental health to user-friendly data that the patient
can understand (Fines, Garner, Bancej, Bernier & Manuel, 2016). Health care assistance task is
information or connection center that allow patients to connect to various health caregivers as the
need may arise. Sensors task performs the task of sensing patients’ activities, neurological
activities through the skin and memory health. Knowledge management is a task that involves
the provision of information skill on Alzheimer’s disease to the patient on Realtime. Medication
task involves various medication options that act a reminder on medication and various types of
medications that a patient takes to improve on symptoms (Song, 2010).
Many different resources are required for the improvement of Alzheimer’s disease patient
management and monitoring. Some of these resources include human resources, machinery
assets, and financial resources. Human resources are required for maintenance of the system and
provision of assistance to clients in the course of operation. Machinery is required to store the
information or data and avail that information to client and health caregivers in real-time. This is

NURSING 7
important for hosting the data of the application that is used to provide health management
services. Financial resources are key to the success of the Alzheimer’s disease management kit to
work well. Finance is required for the development of the system by information technology
experts and to acquire any required assets to ensure that the application works well (Uddin,
Khaksar & Torresen, 2018).
How to measure changes
A good Alzheimer’s disease management kit gives a better result to patients and health
caregivers that include Realtime patient data that show some dementia patients and their health
information. Firstly, positive patient outcome will be the indicator for measuring the if there are
changes (Huygens, Vermeulen, Swinkels, Friele, van Schayck, & de Witte, 2016). Alzheimer’s
disease management kit will help improve patient outcome as the system will ensure that the
patient’s health is properly managed. Moreover, patients mental exercise is essential; caregivers
will get information in Realtime without patient necessary traveling to the hospital to get
technical assistance from health care professionals. Patient’s management is easy as it improves
the health of patients hence a healthy life. Improve the quality of life for older people as their
mental health will be monitored or managed from the comfort of their homes (Al-Khawaldeh,
Hassan & Froelicher, 2012).
Secondly, data on the patient progress and status will help determine if there is any
change occurring in patient management. Health caregivers will have an easy time engaging
patient as the kit enables caregivers to get health information at any particular time. There will
there be a reduced number of patient’s hence low pressure on the health resources available.
Older people with dementia that could not frequently travel and need high attention will highly

NURSING 8
benefit. Moreover, the data on the number of patients that uses the platform is expected to give
the real information of older people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (Jekel, Damian, Storf,
Hausner & Frölich, 2016).
How to create awareness for change
There are some ways to create awareness for changes in the Alzheimer’s disease
management within dementia unit. Firstly, engaging Alzheimer’s disease patient immediately
after diagnosis will help create awareness. Creation of awareness for patients is an important
aspect of improving the debates self-management system. The newly diagnosed Alzheimer’s
disease patients will be immediately enrolled in the management system within the hospital to
ensure that they are properly taken care of. Also, there is need to advocate for registration into
the system for older people or patients that have been on dementia medication within the hospital
as this will serve to create awareness and at the same time improve the patient’s coverage (Kopec
et al., 2016).
Secondly, holding Alzheimer’s disease management awareness campaign and promotions
is another area that will help improve the number of patients that are registered with the dementia
management system. During the campaign, those patients have Alzheimer’s disease are
encouraged and trained on the importance of registering on the management kit for better health
monitoring. Holding a community-based campaign and promotion programs are important for
creating awareness on Alzheimer’s disease as it helps reach out to older people in the community
(The Public Health Agency of Canada, 2014).
Thirdly, training is another aspect of awareness that is strongly needed for effective usage
of the Alzheimer’s disease management kit. Training creates awareness and at the same time

NURSING 9
increases the knowledge that is required for mental health improvement. Newly diagnosed
patients are taken through training immediately after diagnosis to ensure that they are on par with
the management system. Besides, training during the awareness campaigns helps strengthen the
user information or knowledge base. Patients are made aware of various interfaces within the
management application and using or installing the application on their smartphones (Chaudhry,
2015).
Conclusion
Alzheimer’s disease patient management and monitoring kit have importance than
relying on health care facilities for dementia management. Various literature reveals the
importance of telecare as opposed to depending on health caregivers that have diminishing
number reducing the chance of quality health. This necessitates the development of better
dementia management and monitoring kit that is user-friendly and contains all information
required. The Alzheimer’s disease management kit consists of three aspects and these are a
sensor, device application, and data center for maintenance. The kit performs various tasks that
include assessment, medication, mental exercise, neurological sensing, and health monitoring.
Some of the profound importance of the system includes improved health outcomes, available
patient data in real-time, easy assistance of patients and mental health monitoring through neuro-
sensor. Creation of self-awareness is the last aspect of the improvement of the self-management
system for Alzheimer’s disease patients.

NURSING 10
Reference
Al-Khawaldeh, O.A., Al-Hassan, M.A., & Froelicher, E.S. (2012). Self-efficacy, self-
management, and glycemic control in adults with type 2 Alzheimer’s disease Mellitus.
Journal Diabetes Complications, 26(1):10–6.
Cavallo, F., Aquilano, M., & Arvati, M. (2015). An ambient assisted living approach in designing
domiciliary services combined with innovative technologies for patients with Alzheimer’s
disease: a case study. Am. J. Alzheimer’s Dis. Other Demen.,30(1):69–77. Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24951634
Chaudhry, M.R. (2015). Predicting Individual-Level Probabilities of Dementia and Diabetes using
Health Services Administrative Data. Doctoral Thesis. Toronto: Univesity of Toronto.
Dixon, L.C., Ward, D.J., Smith, J., Holmes, S., Mahadeva, R. (2016). New and emerging
technologies for the diagnosis and monitoring of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
A horizon scanning review. Chron Respir Dis.13(4):321–36.
Fines, P., Garner, R., Bancej, C., Bernier, J., & Manuel, D. (2016). Development and implementation of
microsimulation models of neurological conditions. Health Reports., 27:3. Statistics Canada,
Catalogue no. 82-003-X. retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26983006

NURSING 11
Garavand, A., Mohseni, M., Asadi, H., Etemadi, M., Moradi-Joo, M., & Moosavi, A. (2016).
Factors influencing the adoption of health information technologies: a systematic review.
Electron Phys.8(8):2713–8.
Greene, J. & Hibbard, J.H. (2012). Why does patient activation matter? An examination of the
relationships between patient activation and health-related outcomes. Journal of Gen
Intern Med, 27:520–6.doi: 10.1007/s11606-011-1931-2
Grindrod, K.A., Li M., & Gates, A. (2014). Evaluating user perceptions of mobile medication
management applications with older adults: a usability study. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth.,
2(1): e11. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4114457/
Huygens, M.W.J, Vermeulen, J., Swinkels, I.C.S., Friele, R.D., van Schayck, O.C.P., & de
Witte, L.P. (2016). Expectations and needs of patients with a chronic disease toward self-
management and eHealth for self-management purposes. BMC Health Serv Res. 6(1):1–
11. DOI: 10.1186/s12913-016-1484-5.
Jekel, K., Damian, M., Storf, H., Hausner, L., & Frölich, L. (2016). Development of a proxy-free
objective assessment tool of instrumental activities of daily living in mild cognitive impairment
using smart home technologies. Journal of Alzheimer’s Dis., 52(2):509–517. Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927882/
Kopec, J.A., Sayre, E.C., Fines, P., Flanagan, W.M., Nadeau, C., Okhmatovskaia, A., Wolfson, M.C,
(2016). Simulation Technology for Applied Research T Effects of Reductions in Body Mass
Index on the Future Osteoarthritis Burden in Canada: A Population-Based Microsimulation
Study. Arthritis Care Res., 68(8):109–105. doi: 10.1002/acr.22796.

NURSING 12
Liddy, C., Blazkho, V. & Mill K. (2014). Challenges of self-management when living with
multiple chronic conditions Systematic review of the qualitative literature. Can Fam
Physician. 60(12):1123–33.
Manuel, D.G., Tuna, M., Hennessy, D., Bennett, C., Okhmatovskaia, A., Fines, P., Tanuseputro, P., Tu,
J.V., & Flanagan, W. (2014). Simulation Technology for Applied Research T et al. Projections of
preventable risks for cardiovascular disease in Canada to 2021: a microsimulation modelling
approach. CMAJ Open., 2(2): E94–101. doi: 10.9778/cmajo.2012-0015.
The Public Health Agency of Canada, Neurological Health Charities Canada, Health Canada, The
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2014). Mapping Connections: An understanding of
neurologic conditions in Canada. In: Canada PHAo, editor. vol. Cat.: HP35-45/2014E-PDF.
Ottawa: Government of Canada. pp. 101–10.
Postema, T.R.F., Peeters, J.M., & Friele R.D. (2012). Key factors influencing the implementation
success of a home telecare application. International Journal of Medical Information
.81:415–423. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2011.12.003.
Song, M. (2010). Alzheimer’s disease Mellitus and the importance of self-care. J. Cardiovasc.
Nurs.25:93–98. DOI: 10.1097/JCN.0b013e3181c5a364.
Stavropoulos, T.G., Meditskos, G., & Kompatsiaris, I. (2017). Demaware2: Integrating sensors,
multimedia and semantic analysis for the ambient care of dementia. Pervasive Mobile
Comput.;34:126–145.
Tu, K., Jaakkimainen, L., & Butt, D. (2013). National Population Health Study of Neurological
Conditions. Ottawa: Public Health Agency of Canada. Validation of Administrative Data
Algorithms to determine Population Prevalence and Incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease, Dementia,
Multiple Sclerosis, Epilepsy and Parkinson’s Disease.