Dementia Care, Are You a Good Cop or a Bad Cop?

If you are a bad Dementia cop, you are probably upset all the time by the behavior of your Alzheimer's patient. If you are a good Dementia cop, you probably learned that your Alzheimer's patient is not guilty of a crime. By Bob DeMarco +Alzheimer's Reading Room  It is pretty easy to blame Alzheimer's patients for everything they do. It is not unusual for caregivers to tell me that their loved one is mean or a real challenge to manage. Most often when I ask, have you given any serious thought to why they are mean or hard to deal with they answer no. The bad cop might conclude that Alzheimer's patients are "bad" by nature. A good cop on the other hand might decide to investigate and look for clues to the behavior. Experience tells us there are two major reasons (among a long list) why Alzheimer's patients are mean, or express challenging behaviors. Subscribe to the Alzheimer's Reading Room Email: One thing that makes Alzheimer's patients mean is infections, most often urinary tract or bladder infections. Most Alzheimer's patients cannot tell you when they have an infection, are not feeling well. As a result, they tend to get ornery. Doctors and doctors aides are not good at detecting urinary tract infections (UTI). Why you ask? They typical personal care doctor in America schedules patient appointments every ten minutes. The goal to get the patient in an out the door every ten minutes. The doctors aide is the one that usual collects information on th...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - Category: Dementia Authors: Source Type: blogs