For persons who have dementia, a person-centered approach improves how caregivers perceive and handle problematic behaviors. A person-centered care identifies behaviors that may emerge as a result of the person’s unmet needs while viewing actions as a way for the person with dementia to convey his or her needs. Additionally, person-centered Waggaman, LA memory care empowers and encourages the caregiver to recognize that the dementia patient has values, skills, relationships, and experiences that are significant to them and shape who they are as a person. Person-centered care as a whole, makes an ongoing effort to view the world from the perspective of the specific individual with dementia.
Differences Between Person-Centered Care from Traditional Mode of Care
- Medical Approach
A medical approach to memory care comprises a patient’s daily routine being packed with strict activities without any leeway. As an exemplary scenario, after walking, a patient would want to try to sit down. The caregiver utilizing the medical approach will seek assistance from a second caregiver to support the patient on the opposite side, and they get the patient back up and moving again despite the protests by the patient signaling that he/she is feeling too weary. Subsequently, the patient might push the caregivers aside out of frustration. These responsibilities and tasks are marked as completed despite the patient’s opposition.
- Person-Centered Approach
Person-centered care prioritizes the needs of the patient over organizational priorities and tasks, therefore caregivers would not approach the patient with a mental checklist. A person-centered strategy would ask the patient what their typical breakfast was before to moving to the memory care community instead of giving the same meal to everyone. The walking activity would also be encouraged by a person-centered caregiver, but if the patient is drained and uncooperative when the caregiver tries to accompany him/her, the patient can try again later in the day. The patient’s bath time may also be moved to another timeslot if the person-centered caregiver discovers that the patient much prefers taking a bath over a shower and that this is part of his/her regular bedtime ritual.
Naturally, when decisions are made based on the patient’s preferences, the day goes quite well for both the patient and his/her caregiver.
Benefits of Person-Centered Care
Numerous studies have demonstrated that person-centered treatment is efficient in lowering difficult behaviors in dementia patients. The effectiveness of person-centered care for dementia patients was examined in a 2017 evaluation of 19 trials involving 3,985 participants. Let’s explore the results:
By utilizing person-centered care techniques in long-term care communities, agitation, emotional symptoms, and depression were decreased and quality of life was enhanced. Person-centered care improves the quality of life for people with dementia and their loved ones while lessening the frustrations of caregivers. Additionally, it is probably how all of us would prefer to be handled which is in a more compassionate way.
