Role of Nurses in Treating People Diagnosed with Dementia 3
If a person is diagnosed with dementia, they should be offered the right dementia
medication. The nursing team should make dementia friendly relationships with the patients in
their medication approach as well as enhance the environment in which the patients are in (either
in a hospital or at home). These precautions are made to achieve maximum level of quality life
by ensuring that;
• The bed space for patients with dementia is easily differentiated from the others through
use of color pictures
• That their bed area is located near clearly signposted toilets
• That the lighting of the bed area is sufficient
The other role of nurses to patients with dementia is to explain types of medications as well
as the possible side effects. Nurses should also know where dementia patients can get further
information on particular treatments. Also they should be conversant with online resources and
local agencies. It is also important for nurses to understand how the medication works especially
when responding to patients or family members (Sinclair AJ et al. (2014).
Like any other professionals, nursing practitioners have special binding attitudes, values and
behaviors. Attitudes and behaviors of nurses are largely defined by values such as respect,
obligation and responsibility. In this case, the attitude (a particular thinking or feeling about
patients) and the perception (ability to sense changes in medication) of nurses should be in-line
with treating the dementia patients.
The other aspect that nurses should always have in mind is that people with dementia can
simply forget whether they took their medication or not. Therefore, it is a nurse’s role to ask for
patients tablets and countercheck whether they are taking them as prescribed, or else they take an
