The
normal activities of the elderly (and people in general) can be classified into
two groups:
- Activities of daily living (ADL): are those that are closely related to self-care (feeding, dressing, grooming, ambulation, continence and communication) àThe scales that we use for the assessment of ADL are: the index of activities of daily living (Katz), the Barthel Index, the level of disability of the red cross and the Plutchik scale.
- Instrumental activities of daily living (IADL): are those that require a higher level of personal autonomy (writing, reading, cleaning, cooking, medication management and money management) àThe scale that we use for evaluation is the Lawton and Brody index.
When
the elderly start to have problems related to the inability of performing these
activities, it is important that they have the help of a caregiver (who may be
his / her spouse, child or a person hired for this task).
The
primary caregiver is the person who
is responsible for daily support and care of patients with dementia. The
problem that arises is that the attention and tasks will increase progressively
over the disease, so there comes a point where you can see a series of
physical, psychological and socio-family problems, which nowadays we known as: caregiver burden, so it is very
important the preventive work, that we can carry out by Zarit scale.
I think that nursing plays a very
important role at the time to recognize when there's a problem of overloading
the primary caregiver of an elder with dementia. I think it's very important
that there an early detection of this problem, since, as a result, the elderly
can be neglected.
Bibliography
- Fisterra. [Monografía de internet]. [Fecha de consulta 2 de abril de 2013]. Disponible en: http://www.fisterra.com/guias-clinicas/atencion-al-cuidador-paciente-con-demencia/
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