You will prepare and submit a term paper on Dementia Nursing Care Plan and Analysis. Your paper should be a minimum of 2250 words in length. Each assessment criteria has a goal to address a problem, and the care and rationale for achieving the goal have been established. Also, the evaluation methods for each assessment have been set. The plan has been prepared based on the review of relevant literature on dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and practices for the provision of care.

Bill has displayed symptoms of Dementia or Alzheimer’s Type (DAT). Early features of DAT include impaired memory, difficulties in problem-solving, preoccupation with long past events, decreased spontaneity, impaired speed, and accuracy of response. Individuals try to avoid unfamiliar activities, and disorders of perception and language may appear. During the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease, physical and cognitive effects are marked and disorders in gait, paresis, and paralysis of extremities, seizures, peripheral neuropathy, extrapyramidal signs, and urinary incontinence may be visible. Often, the patient is no longer ambulatory, and is mute, bedridden and is in decorticate posture. Sometimes myoclonus occurs in some individuals. The progression of Alzheimer’s disease is slow and could render the patient to a state of complete helplessness in eight to ten years. A distinct possibility is affective disturbances. The most effective tools to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease are good family history, physical examination, and laboratory and radiographic tests for ruling out other causes of dementia (First & Tasman, 2004).

According to Access Economics (2006), over 200,000 Australians were suffering from dementia in 2005, which was about 1 percent of the population. Alzheimer’s disease, caused by abnormal changes in brain tissue known as ‘plaques and tangles,’ has been attributed to be the most common cause of dementia, accounting for 50-60 percent of all cases. The number of Australians with dementia in 2050 has been projected to 730,000, about 2.8 percent of the population, and a four-fold increase from 2000 levels.