engleski

Out-institutional care for people with Alzheimer's disease

Patients with Alzheimer's disease have insufficient care provided by the Croatian health care system and there is a clear need for improving the support and care for these patients. The trend in dealing with this problem is home care. The advantage of this approach is the possibility for family members to participate in caregiving, as well as the opportunity for the paitent to live at home in a well-known environment, where there are no needs for a major lifestyle change. Unfortunately, because of the wide spectrum of cognitive and behavioral symptoms, it is difficult and challenging to provide care for patients with Alzheimer's disease. The aim of our project is to give education and training for caregivers in Croatia. Together with education, we are also trying to qualify care-givers to engage more in evaluation of the patient's state of health and to make plans for the treatment. We achieve this by organizing lectures and workshops covering important topics of caregiving like communication with patients, hygiene, preparing meals and eating, household duties, etc. The end users of our program are professional caregivers, family members, social workers, nurses and volunteers. Apart from patients' benefit, our program is supposed to have a number of benefits for the society as well. Among others, the need for patients hospitalization is postponed, which decreases the health care expenses.

Alzheimer's disease ; care-givers ; dementia ; families ; help ; nurses ; out-institutional care ; self-help ; social workers ; society ; volunteers

Časopis Neurologia Croatica indeksiran je u bazama Neuroscience Citation Index i EMBASE/Excerpta Medica.