Health Optimisation - Gerontic Nursing Care Essay

Health Optimisation - Gerontic Nursing Care - Essay Example Sullivan (2008) further points out that the patients suffering from dementia and delirium tend to have issues and behavioral problems of the same type including purposeless activity, sleep disorders, inappropriate conduct or aggressiveness. In both cases, the patient is most likely to be disoriented, have hallucination and delusions. Virani et al (2010) adds that patients suffering from dementia are at a high risk of getting into the condition of delirium. However, the overlap does not account for all the symptoms associated with each condition. Each condition has a set of unique symptoms that are entirely different from the other. According to Thomas et al (2008), â€Å"delirium is characterized by acute consciousness disturbances and global changes in cognition†. Moreover the patient can be extremely hyperactive if agitated or extremely hyper alert. On the other hand, Eliopoulos (2010) points out that a delirium patient can be hypoactive if the patient is confused, lethargic or even when sedated. Dementia on the other hand has many characteristics. According to Ouldred et al (2008), â€Å"dementia is characterized by slower move into deficits in cognition that include memory impairment and at least one of the disturbances of cognition such as aspraxia, asphasia, and a disturbed or agnostic executive functioning†. The impairment cause must be significant in occupational or social functioning and represent a great decline from a previous level of functioning. Course of illness According to Miller (2009), delirium is transitory. Its onset is quick and its treatment will remit symptoms. A sudden drop to baseline causes delirium. Dementia on the other hand is characterized by a slow progress and a long-term gradual decline from the baseline. Furthermore, it is chronic, progressive and irreversible. Etiology When comparing both delirium and dementia etiologically, a big difference comes out. Metabolic imbalance, substance abuse, failure of the liver, congestive heart failure or its infection all cause delirium. On the other hand, dementia is mainly caused by degeneration of the nervous system including neurodegenerative diseases and Alzheimer (Waszynski et al, 2008). Treatment According to Saxon et al (2010), the delirium symptoms can be prevented or reversed to prevent further medical or cognitive impairment. Some of the management of delirium, which are non-pharmacological, include steps such as provision of optimized, quite environments, in contrast, the dementia symptoms cannot be remitted but can be managed. Assessment The elderly patients like Mr. Webb are mostly at a higher risk of cognitive disorders. These cognitive disorders can be chronic such as dementia or acute such as delirium. For effective treatment, the first step is clarifying the diagnosis and assessment at onset. However, as Thomas et al (2008) explains, this can be challenging to the elderly patients like Mr. Webb. They often have accompanied medical co-mor bidities that can result to affective and cognitive changes (Gagliardi, 2008). 1. Approach the patient (Mr. Webb) As explained by Gagliardi (2008), I will try to reduce the number of people in the room. As well, as encourage him to rest either on the bed or on the chair. I will initiate a