Category: Dementia

  • 93. Case: Mr. Rattan Wants to Stay

    Mr. Rattan has been a resident at Ocean Wind, a retirement community offering a range of options for accommodation, for the last ten years since his partner died.  Currently he has a studio apartment in the assisted living wing, which provides assistance with ADLs. Mr. Rattan has been diagnosed with dementia.  In the last few…

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  • 92. Case: End of Life with Dementia

    Mr. Shah lives in a continuing care facility. A nurse recently commented; “My patient, Mr. Shah, has an advance directive that he wrote last year and that requests medical assistance in dying when he is no longer able to recognize his wife. His dementia has worsened quickly and recently he’s asked who his wife is…

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  • 73. Case: Compulsive Hoarding – Bessie

    Bessie is 65 years old and is living with schizophrenia. She has recently been discharged from hospital, and is now receiving mental health support services at home.  For a while the team has attempted to visit Bessie twice a day. She initially refused to let the team into her apartment and has now allowed health…

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  • 29. Case: Complicated Caring

    Mr. Sundown is a 78-year old African Nova Scotian who is a patient in an internal medicine clinical unit at the Halifax Infirmary. He has a variety of serious medical conditions including diabetes, coronary artery disease, and advanced COPD. He is experiencing progressive respiratory failure on the basis of a difficult-to-treat pneumonia. Mr. Sundown has…

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  • 24. Case: Changing Care and Care-Giving

    Kevin Henderson is an 83-year old man who is hospitalized in an internal medicine clinical unit at the local hospital. Kevin has a variety of serious medical conditions including severe Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, coronary artery disease and advanced chronic obstructive lung disease. He is slowly recovering from a difficult-to-treat pneumonia, which required treatment with intravenous…

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  • 21. Case: Balancing Concerns

    “Where’s the door to my bathroom? Can’t a man get some privacy?” “Uh oh, that’s Elias again. We’d better make sure he’s alright.” “How many times are we going to have to go through this with him? Maybe we should just put the bathroom door on again.” “The only problem is that on his ‘bad’…

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  • 18. Case: When the “Truth” is Painful

    Mrs. Sally Parrot, a 73-year old widow, has mild dementia of a presumed neurovascular type. She resides in her own small apartment in Serenity, a private continuing care community in Bedford, where she receives some assistance with housekeeping, meal preparation and organization of her medications. Sally is actively engaged in Serenity’s structured activities and, in…

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  • 11. Case: Truth-Telling

    The patient is an 89-year-old gentleman with moderate dementia and a history of COPD, swallowing difficulties, a CVA, and recent aspiration. The investigation of his aspiration uncovered a lesion in his lung- the physicians felt it was likely to be cancerous. Thoracic surgery verified that it was lung cancer and a determination was made that…

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  • 4. Case: Expectations for Care

    Ned is an elderly patient with relatively advanced dementia who is recovering from surgery to repair a hip fracture. He spends most of every 24-hour period screaming unless someone familiar sits with him. Staff members on the unit are becoming increasingly frustrated and stressed. The unit manager has received numerous complaints, verbal and written, from…

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  • 3. Case: Superbugs

    Jeannette Cutler is an 83-year old woman admitted to hospital after falling and breaking her arm.  She reports that she fell because she passed out, and so further investigations are being conducted.  She has mild dementia but is otherwise seemingly healthy.  Upon admission, she screens positive for MRSA and is subject to strict isolation procedures…

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