RANIER — As dementia is increasingly diagnosed in the aging population, giving assisted living residents “activities that are meaningful to them” is part of a change in services offered by Decker’s Family Care.
The business’ Ranier residential assisted-living center, the Ranier Roost, will adopt a program “breaking out into a niche focusing on dementia,” according to John Decker, manager and director of nursing and dementia care coordinator for Decker’s Family Care, Inc.
Based on a resident’s health and symptoms, the initiative aims to focus on the cognitive needs that residents with dementia have, Decker said.
“We can brag about all these activities we have — like bingo — but we can’t expect people with certain levels of dementia to partake in those,” Decker said. “They’re doing it, but they’re frustrated — so it’s not meaningful to them. Offering something like color sorting — something they can succeed in — makes more sense.”
The facility’s 24 staff members will be trained in the new program, which additionally focuses on “dementia-like” disorders and symptoms. Over the next six months, employees will attend two-day training sessions once a month through Aging Services of Minnesota and the Alzheimer’s Association.
Dementia is a memory disorder in which a person experiences memory decline greater than normally expected with aging, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. To be diagnosed with dementia, the decline must include interference with cognitive abilities like: recognizing objects; executing motor activities; understanding spoken or written language and generating coherent speech; thinking abstractly, making sound judgments and planning and carrying out “complex” tasks.
Mary Decker, owner of Decker’s Family Care, explained that symptoms of dementia “include things we take for granted — it’s not just about losing your car keys, but you forget what they’re for.
“People with dementia revert to past memories — a woman might think she’s gotta get home because her parents are waiting for her, or she needs to get home to her children and her husband — whatever stage they are in, you kind of have to work with them to see what’s going through their mind.”
John Decker added that, although dementia is not a normal part of the aging process, dementia can be a gradual process, varying in each person.
“This is important because there’s no cure for it, but we can help maintain (residents’) current levels of cognition,” John Decker said. “And that’s how we can help with their quality of life and dignity — to not let it progress as fast as it normally would.”
Part of the training entails learning how to recognize dementia early, as well as learning about non-medication therapies to help clients with dementia. He explained the symptoms of dementia can cause other symptoms, such as restlessness, anxiety, fearfulness, agitation and loss of orientation.
“Non-medication therapy is as important — if not more important — than medication therapy,” John Decker said, referring to methods staff members can use to calm the residents through talking with them and reassuring them.
He added that some group activities for residents with dementia can be overstimulating, depending which level of dementia they are at. Therefore, structure in smaller groups and consistency is important to offer, Decker said.
Since dementia can affect other areas of life — such as appetite or ability to eat — nutrition is a challenge that Decker hopes the training will help address. Even things like the color of the plate or the arrangement of the food can make a difference, he added, because dementia affects the mind’s process of sequencing.
The dementia program at the Ranier Roost will offer educational classes for family members of residents with dementia, as a part of public outreach.
“Alzheimer’s diseases and diseases like dementia are as hard on families as cancer or other diseases,” Decker said. “A mother might not recognize her daughter anymore, so even just educating the family on how to visit helps — being aware that the resident can’t remember and also understanding how frustrating it would be to have someone you think is a complete stranger trying to get you to remember things.”
Other education efforts include informing the public on how to recognize dementia early, and what appropriate activities someone with dementia would enjoy.
He said the program will add to the dementia care already offered by the center, noting that dementia has always been around, but these days it is recognized more by the medical community in hopes to diagnose it early.
“There are things we can do to slow down the progression of the disease,” Decker said. “It’s a combination of recognizing the signs, controlling the symptoms and offering a safe environment.”
He said he is planning to add a “rummage room” to the center — a room in which residents go to feel art on the wall, go through drawers and touch different textures. People with dementia are drawn to doing these things, he explained, and it helps them maintain their spatial relations.
Decker added that the move to the dementia program now is timely, as the upcoming prediction of the year 2020 expects the U.S. to have a population of people over the age of 65 outnumbering those 18 and younger — for the first time in history. The Alzheimer’s Association also expects 10 million new cases of Alzheimer’s by then, on top of the needs from the Baby Boomer generation in elderly care facilities, he said.
Smaller upcoming changes at the Ranier Roost such as having staff dress in plain, solid-color scrubs — designs or prints may look like bugs to a person with dementia — are also part of the effort. Other possible symptoms staff are learning about are possibilities that a resident with dementia seeing the rug on the floor as a hole in the ground; or a memory decline leading a person to believe they need to bring the cows in to the barn before going to bed.
“Time can be so fluid to (people with dementia) — how they feel now is not how they feel the next second,” Decker said. “You have to go to their world. You can’t try to bring them to yours.”
