Presenter: Dorothy Colby, Hale Kū‘ike Director of Community Engagement & Positive Approach to Care® Trainer
Date: 10/15/20
Recording length: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Sponsors: Hale Kū‘ike and Catholic Charities Hawai‘i
Description:
- Challenging behaviors, why are they happening?
- When these challenges arise, what can make it better or worse?
- It takes two to tango, or to tangle. How can we learn to dance with our partner for a better outcome for both of us?
If you were to ask someone to make a list of challenging dementia behaviors it would be long — repeated questions, paranoia, wandering, using “bad” words, resisting or refusing care, losing important things, and many more. If we look at the brain changes cause by dementia, we can start to understand the difference in how they perceive and interpret the world around them, including us, their care partners. We then can start to understand how our loving offers of help might be interpreted as a threat to a changing brain and these challenging situations occur.
These challenges are not just for the person living with dementia, they are challenges for everyone around them too. We are facing a challenging situation together. If we can take a step back and look at all the pieces of the puzzle that have led up to this challenge, we can learn and make changes to help make it better, or perhaps prevent it in the future. We can learn to be good, non-judgmental dementia detectives.
As detectives we need to examine our human physical needs — the need to eat and drink, to expend or recharge our energy, eliminate waste, be comfortable and free of pain. We need to look for signs of basic human emotional distress — anger, sadness, loneliness, fear and boredom. When any these needs are not met, whether we are living with dementia or not, we experience challenging situations and distress.
We can use the Positive Approach to Care® GEMS brain change model and the Six Pieces of the Puzzle to help us with our detective work. The GEMS can help with understanding what abilities change throughout the dementia journey and how we can adjust to them. The Six Pieces of the Puzzle can help with looking at all the factors that affect a person and figuring out where we can make positive changes to help mitigate or prevent challenging situations.
To learn more about challenging situations for people living with dementia, you can view our recorded webinar, “Challenging Behaviors: Recognizing Unmet Needs.” You can also download the workshop slide deck, GEMS printable poster, and the PAC Resource Cards.
For more information about PAC, visit www.teepasnow.com.