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Caring for someone with dementia is never easy. In fact, many people often ask for support from other individuals who are also taking care of dementia patients. The first thing you should do is make some modifications in your home. People with dementia often see the world as a new and confusing place. Things can be scary every day. Therefore, it helps to adjust the environment to suit their needs and make them feel as comfortable as possible. Here is a guide on how individuals can create a danger-free home for those with dementia.

Ask for Guidance from Local Aging Agency
Often, these professionals have experience in taking care of people with Alzheimer's or other diseases related to dementia. They can recommend certified aging experts to come inspect your house and advise accordingly on safety issues in your home. It, therefore, helps to give them a call before modifying your house.

Inspect Areas of Your House That May be Unsafe
Check out areas in your house that you suspect may compromise the safety of your loved one. And when doing that, it helps to inspect them from the patient's point of view. So you have to remember that this condition affects one's balance, cognitive abilities, memory as well as perception. According to Jane Byrne, Project Coordinator at FirstCare nursing home Wicklow, "Someone with this condition has a difficult time interpreting and remembering information as well as making sound decisions." It, therefore, helps to modify your house in a way that will give them an easy time. And when doing that, you also should be careful. Redecorating or redesigning your home and other significant changes can be unsettling. On the other hand, simple moves like furniture rearrangement can also be alarming. Therefore, be cautious and give them time to adjust.

Follow the AARP Checklist for Home Safety
For those who don't have any idea on where to start, having this list will be useful. It outlines all the safety measures caregivers should take in order to make a home danger-free for loved ones with dementia. This list will serve as a guide on how to create a safe environment. Some of the things homeowners are advised to do, include:
Decluttering the walkway of any substance. Even if there is ice, snow, or debris, individuals should make sure it is removed. It's essential that you move bikes, chalks, lawn ornaments, or jump ropes to other rooms.

Marking Step Edges Using Neon Glow in the Dark Tape
Providing sufficient lighting, both indoors and outdoors. Sometimes people with dementia may perceive shadows as demons or burglars. Placing bright outdoor lighting, therefore, helps reduce falls, fear, as well as anxiety.

Repairing uneven bricks or cracked pavements as they serve as tripping points.

Designate a Danger Zone
Dementia people forget how things are used quickly. They can even drink wiper juice or touch a hot grill with bare hands. Therefore, individuals should convert one room, either the garage or outdoor shed, into storing substances such as sharp knives, as well as cutters, bleach, washing products, paint, insecticides, and other substances that might be confused. It also helps to have a combination of locks on rooms that contain hazardous items.

Creating a safe home for seniors with dementia is about identifying areas in your house that may pose dangers and modifying them so that they're safe. It also helps that individuals do a pantry patrol regularly since patients may eat spoiled or moldy foods.

Dr. Marina Abdel Malak

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Abstract:Empowering patients to set health-directed goals can be a challenging process. The skilled clinician successfully supports patients in setting goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic/relevant, and time-related). When goals are made in collaboration with patients, they are more likely to be long-lasting and impactful. This article will focus on how physicians can work with patients to identify, create, and work towards meaningful interventions that optimize health.

Key Words: motivation, behaviour changes, counselling, goals, treatment.

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Goal-setting should be a partnership between physicians and patients

Asking patients what THEY want—and can—change in their lives/health is the first step to eliciting what behaviours can be targeted

After goals are set, it is important for physicians to reassess patients' progress by asking them if goals were met, and why or why not. When success occurs, patients should be congratulated on their achievements. If the goals were not met, physicians should seek to understand why this occurred, and work with patients to create new goals that are more realistic or achievable

Physicians should motivate patients to set goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic/relevant, and time-related)

Patients are more likely to adhere to behaviours, habits, or interventions if they feel understood, supported, and empowered

Supporting patients in achieving goals that optimize health can have significant impacts on patient wellness, self-esteem, functioning; and strengthens the physician-patient relationship

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Advances in Alzheimer's Disease Management

CHAPTER 7: Ethical and clinically humane end-of-life care for those living with dementia
by Michael Gordon

Editors:
Serge Gauthier, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Pedro Rosa-Neto, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Publisher: Future Medicine
Reviewed by: Michael Gordon, MD, MSc, FRCPC, FACP, FRCPEdin

It is always a pleasure to be able to discuss a new book to a receptive audience when I believe the book has something special to offer. When it comes to reviewing books outside the realm of medicine or the medical sciences, reviews often are reflective of the personal and aesthetic views of the reviewer. There are many books written for professional readers on the fringe of medical science that deal with non-clinical aspects of medicine and many that have translated important medical concepts to the lay audience and others in the form of memoirs and novels of the personal and historical type that add a great deal to the general wealth and richness of medicine and the associated medical sciences.

To undertake an academic text book is always a daunting task. Generally if experts and specialists in the field cannot write such a book without the help of others and currently the idea of editors securing experts to write the relevant chapters is a well-accepted methodology for achieving that goal. That being said it becomes the responsibility of the editors to make sure that those that they recruit to write the relevant chapters have the academically sound and clinically and research-based capability of doing so and on top of that have the writing skills to achieve their goal. Moreover, for the chapters to hang together in one strives to have some degree of congruence in the writing approaches and styles, while at the same time promoting the particular capabilities of the writers of each chapter. At the end it is hoped that the chapters hang together into a whole that attracts the reader and provides a perspective on the subject and each of its varied components that would be hard to achieve if the reader decided to explore each of the subject chapters separately without the benefit of them being collated, edited and reference into one easily accessible book.

I am therefore pleased and honoured to not only present the book to subscribers of HealthPlexus.net, Advances in Alzheimer’s Disease Management edited by Serge Gauthier and Pedro Rosa-Neto but to have been one of the contributors. At a time when the knowledge surrounding Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias is on the one hand expanding rapidly from the scientific perspective, for the practicing physician and patient living with dementia and their families, the challenges seems to be overwhelming. There seems to be a huge disconnect between the understanding and scientific progress of the causes in many domains of enquiry and the actual clinical impact that all this new knowledge currently has that physicians in the front lines of care can utilize clinically.

In medicine however, one never knows what key will be the one that opens the door we are all looking to enter. At any given time all we can do is to try and figure out using the best clues and evidence available to know what secrets lay behind that door. The readily accessible E-book format in which Advances in Alzheimer’s disease management is produced allows for a relatively low cost alternative to the usual costs of hard copy texts. The content of the book covers all the main challenging concepts and recommended or best-practices as they exists currently. Obviously in time, perhaps a very short time, some of these will change but for those in the field we all know that many of the concepts and practices have not changed in many years.

The table of contents includes the following subjects by the authors listed next to the chapter titles, with mine at the end. I have been given permission to reproduce my chapter, Ethical and clinically humane end-of-life care for those living with dementia on the HealthPlexus.net website so that subscribers can get a taste of the e-book itself.

1) Genetics of Alzheimer’s disease by Jayashree Viswanathan, Hilkka Soininen & Mikko Hiltunen;
2) Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease by Pedro Rosa-Neto, Jared Rowley, Antoine Leuzy, Sara Mohades, Monica Shin, Marina T Dauar and Serge Gauthier
3) Available symptomatic antidementia drugs by Marie-Pierre Thibodeau and Fadi Massoud
4) New drugs under development for Alzheimer’s disease by Lezanne Ooi, Kirubakaran Shanmugam, Mili Patel, Rachel Debono and Gerald Münch
5) Management of agitation and aggression: controversies and possible solutions by Clive Ballard and Anne Corbett
6) Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease by Serge Gauthier and Christopher JS Patterson
7) Ethical and clinically humane end-of-life care for those living with dementia by Michael Gordon

For those interested in ordering the book, this can be done through the following links:
The direct URL for the book is:
http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/book/10.2217/9781780840840
For those who are interested in finding more information about the book/our e-book series, the email address is:
info@futuremedicine.com
For those who wish to place an order, the email is:
sales@futuremedicine.com