Monday, 18 August 2003: 13:45-15:15
Michigan Room (Sheraton Hotel and Towers)

S012 Current Issues in Psychogeriatric Nursing

Psychogeriatric nursing covers elderly people in a wide range of problem situations. This symposium will focus on the most old, fragile people and issues that contribute to care quality and safe high quality work environment for staff. High quality nursing care depends on systematic assessments as a basis for decisions about nursing care and social services. It is also a prerequisite for analysing and developing the relationship between hospital and municipal care and services to the elderly. Professor Sölve Elmståhl, Lund University, Sweden, will present findings from the Swedish National Study on Aging and care, especially with regard to the implementation of systematic assessment and establishing of a register that can form the basis for analysing the relationship between hospital and municipal care to the elderly. The distribution of people receiving municipal care, their consumption of acute hospital care as well primary health care will be reported. Findings suggest that the most fragile elderly might be marginalised from specialised out patient care as well as hospital care. Systematic assessments are a basis for individualised care and specific interventions adapted to the person’s needs. Professor Henry Brodaty, The Prince Henry and The Prince of Wales hospitals, Sydney, Australia, will present under the heading: "Dementia in the Nursing home". Behavioural and psychological symptoms (BPSD) are ubiquitous in the later stages of dementia and these are stressful to families, nursing staff, other residents and probably also a sign of stress in the person him/herself. Data on the prevalence of BPSD in nursing homes, factors that predict their occurrence and on successful management strategies as well as a model for structuring interventions will be presented. One specific intervention to improve nursing care is the Need-driven Dementia compromised Behavior Model (NDB). Professor Ann Whall, The University of Michigan, USA will describes the NDB model and the ongoing research project guided by this model. The NDB model was developed to comprehensively assess behavior and thus more clearly direct caregiver interventions. The model focuses background factors such as past personality patterns, proximal factors such as hunger and pain, environmental factors both physical and social in nature. The model is tested in a 5 year National Institutes of Health study across three universities. Systematic assessments, understanding the needs of older people as well as efficient interventions are a prerequisite for high quality nursing care. However, understanding the nursing staff as for attitudes and actions and reactions is also needed to intervene successfully. Associate professor Anna-Karin Edberg, Lund University, will present finding form a cross-cultural study, aiming at understand reasoning among nursing staff in Scandinavia, UK and Australia. Experienced nurses participated in focus group discussions, all with the same structure. Findings from these groups will be presented and further used to validate an instrument aiming at assessing strain in nursing care of patients with dementia and to explore if that is universal or culturally determined.
Chair:Ingalill Rahm Hallberg
 S012-001 Use or Misuse of Public Service Among the Elderly? Preliminary Results from a Population Based Study
Sölve Elmståhl
 S012-002 Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia: A 7-Tiered Triangular Model of Management
Henry Brodaty, Brian Draper, L. F. Low
 S012-003 Comprehensive Assessment of Persons with Dementia in Nursing Homes
Ann Whall
 S012-004 Strain in Nursing Care of People with Dementia from a Transcultural Perspective
Anna-Karin Edberg, Michael Bird

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