Effects of Dehydration in Older People with Mental Health Needs - Essay Example

Effects of dehydration in older people with mental health needs February 14, Introduction Dehydrationhas a significant influence on the mentally ill patients. The research delves on the dehydration concept. Dehydration occurs when a patient’s water percentage level drops to unhealthy levels. The research delves on the Alzheimers disease patients. The healthcare professional must ensure that all mentally ill patients remain hydrated Why I have chosen this issue? I have chosen the issue because people are more than two-thirds water. All people need water to survive. Water brings the blood smoothly throughout the human body. The average individual drinks water. Water is used help improve digestion of solid food. A person must be hydrated in order to keep a healthy physical condition. Without water, the average person cannot perform their daily tasks (McSherry, 2010). Furthermore, the issue includes focusing on sick patients paying for the services of the health care (Brender, 1997). Even though the sick patients, including the Alzheimers disease patients, y are physically unhealthy, the same sick individuals have the right to life. The patients pay for the services of the healthcare facilities. The customers or patients pay for the continued operations of the healthcare facilities. The healthcare facilities must pay for the salaries of the healthcare professionals (Katon, 2009). In turn, the issue focuses on patients deserving high quality medical services (British_Medical_Association, 2009). The medical professionals must continue to study the latest trends and breakthroughs in the medical profession. The medical profession includes a lifetime study of newer and more effective medical interventions. The medical interventions include research and development of new medicines. Likewise, continuing medical professional training includes the research and development of new medical procedures. Additionally, the issue includes the human body’s need for water to hasten the healing process. My current dehydration research will zero in on one mentally ill patient type. The patient type is the patients afflicted with Alzheimers disease. The symptoms of the ailment prevent the patients from thinking properly. The patients cannot think logically. Consequently, the patients forgot how to drink water. The same patients forgot how when to drink water. In the same manner, the Alzheimers disease forgot how to eat food. The patients have become mindless vegetables. Vegetables stay in their place. The vegetables do not move around like animals or birds Further, the issue incorporates focusing on the dehydration of individuals with mental illness catapulting me to be a more seasoned expertise in this particular healthcare department. The knowledge will increase my expertise in treating future Alzheimers disease patients (Constable, 2012). With each experience, my nursing assessment skills are doubled and even tripled. Likewise, I will be a more refined instrument in the specialized field that aids the mentally ill patients live a more comfortable life. Consequently, my calculation skills generated from focusing on the dehydration analysis will ensure that more ailing patients will have better healthcare services. Why is it an issue for older people with mental health needs? The issue Effects of dehydration in older people with mental health needs is a significant issue for older people with mental health needs. Dehydration has disastrous effects on the patients, especially the mentally ill older people. Dehydration will result to the death or permanent disability of the patients. Further, people normally want to live. The patients may not know that dehydration hastens their death. The duty of the healthcare professional and the healthcare facilities is to impress on the patients, including the Alzheimers disease patients, that they must drink the minimum amount of daily water and food to survive. It would be unethical for the healthcare professional to withheld vital life-saving healthcare information from the patients. Since most people want to live, they are interested in the dehydration issue. With the new knowledge, the patients will realize that they must change their current stance (Ford, 2009). Likewise, their current stance of not being serious in drinking water of eating the right kinds of health-giving foods will be improved. The healthcare professional’s duty includes explaining to the patients the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. And drinking water is one of the best ways for patients to bounce back into their former healthy selves (Gordon, 2002). As mentally challenged patients, the patients need help (Pirkis, 2004). The patients cannot think properly. Consequently, the patients, especially the Alzheimers disease patients, need someone to feed them. They need another person, usually the nurse or caregiver, to cook their food, take a bath, and other personal necessities. The mentally ill patients will surely die if the healthcare professional, family member, friends or other individuals will not come to their aid, including convincing the patients to drink a glass of cold refreshing water (Guzzetta, 1998). Analyse How does the issue affect the lives of older people, carers, professional, families etc? The issue of dehydration of the mentally ill patients significantly affects the lives of the older people, carers, professionals, families, and other persons. The issue will help these same persons avoid being hospitalized because of dehydration. The older person will learn the ill effects of not drinking water when the body needs water. The older persons will save lots of medical bills when their drinking water eliminates the side effects of dehydration (Srivastava, 2007). To ensure success, the issue impresses on the older people, carers, professional, families, and other persons that the healthcare professional must discuss about dehydration to the patients. The healthcare professional, like me, must impress on the mentally ill patients that the patients, including the Alzheimers disease patients must engage in mental exercises. Mental exercises will increase brain activity. Alzheimers disease is a brain activity malfunction. Exercise counters the effects of Alzheimers disease. Mental exercises include reading books. Another favorite exercise is reading newspapers. A third viable exercise, solving crossword puzzles, will postpone the onset of Alzheimers disease as well as slow down the degenerative brain functions (Banta, 2004). Further, the issue impresses on the older people, carers, professional, families, and other persons that the health care nurse will encourage the Alzheimers disease patient that they must engage in middle age activities to fight off the ill effects of Alzheimers disease. Middle age activities include joining sports activities. The activities include table tennis, basketball, soccer, baseball, or just simply running like a jogger. Having an outgoing personality can deter the uninvited encroachment of the dreaded Alzheimers disease. An outgoing personality means that the person is often mingling with other persons. On the far opposite, the loners or hermits of society have higher chances of being diagnosed with early Alzheimers disease. The people who do not engage in mental exercises like reading and writing do not use the capacity of their brain to the fullest. Consequently, the brain cells lie dormant. Dormancy can precipitate to the premature death of the brain cells (OConnell, 2010). Additionally, the issue impresses on the older people, carers, professional, families, and other persons that the healthcare professional, including the nurse, will explain to Alzheimers disease patients that lowering the Alzheimers disease patients’ homocysteine levels may reduce the gravity of both Alzheimers disease. Reducing the intake of high dosages of Vitamin B can help fight Alzheimers disease and Dementia. The healthcare professional, like me, must gain additional in-depth mastery of Alzheimers disease. The healthcare professionals, including the medical doctors and nurses, must spearhead allocating more than enough time and effort to lessening the discomforts of the Alzheimers disease patients. Sometimes, healthcare professionals are touched by the passing away of patients under their many months or years of care. This only shows that nursing professionals are also human beings, having both feelings of happiness and grief (Madeleine, 2006). Reflection How has writing the project helped you to meet the course learning outcomes? My writing the project has helped me to meet the course learning outcomes. My book knowledge on nursing assessment and other nursing skills concepts have been put into real life practice. Consequently, I have gained the necessary confidence and expertise to alleviate the patients during their time of health need. Further, writing this paper trained me to record and gain expert knowledge on the issue during my short but beneficial healthcare duty. My rounds at the healthcare facilities included ensuring that older people drink the minimum amount of daily liquid requirements. My tour of duty includes monitoring the food intake needs of people with mental health needs (Curry, 1999). Furthermore, the human body is more than two thirds liquid. The body’s blood is mostly composed of water. Consequently, the responsibility of the nurses, like me, is to ensure the patients drink water. One possible alternative is to attach a dextrose tube to the patients’ hands. This is called intravenous liquid intake. With the nurses’ normally hectic schedule, the use of dextrose is a good choice. However, the dextrose may hinder the normal movement of the patients, especially patients who are hyperactive (Barrett, 2003). Further, the issue is in line with the course learning outcome where the nurses, like me, are taught that we have to institute a systematic, automatic, and consistent procedure during our daily movements from one hospital room to the next. I am not exempted from this nursing intervention standard. I learned that dehydration is characterized as the lack of body fluids. The best remedy for this predicament is to help the patients drink the required water requirements. The body’s lack of water for 48 hours may wreak damaging effects on the human body. As the person’s body grows older, the body’s normal demand for water decreases. With the decrease, the human body’s thirst signal is reduced. The body feels lesser urges to grab a glass of crystal clear tap water. Furthermore, the normal person can independently scamper to the nearest beverage spot quench the same person’s current thirst. However, some older people are hindered by formidable obstacles. The patients with mental illnesses cannot detect the body’s signal to drink another glass of cool fresh water. The mentally ill patients include those suffering from the forgetfulness effects of Alzheimer’s. The patient’s memory capacity slows down to lower speeds. Additionally, I learned that the Alzheimer’s patients have malfunctioning osmoreceptors. The osmoreceptors can be easily located within the human brain’s hypothalamus region. The malfunction osmoreceptors dismantle the human brain’s capacity to transmit information. One of the important messages is the brain’s informing the other body parts to coordinate their efforts to gobble up a glass of refreshing beverage. The Osmoreceptors help the body manage the thirst needs. The Alzheimers ailment contributes to the damage of the osmoreceptors. The damage precipitates to the malfunctioning of the patients’ cognitive functions (Yeo, 2011). Consequently, I learned that patients are not able to feel that their body must drink lots of thirst quenching beverage. Similarly, the patients are not able to seek the help of the nurse, social workers, medical doctor, family, friends and other persons. Thus, the Alzheimer patient must be rescued from his or her need for water. Likewise, I gained new knowledge indicating Alzheimer’s disease is a confirmed mental illness. Until today, there has been no complete remedy for the disease. The patient’s mental capacity slowly deteriorates. The patient is often confused because he or she cannot remember simple details. Simple details include the name of the person who is communicating with the patient. The patient may forget where he or she lives. The patient may also suffer from irritability. Other patients are often very aggressive. In the advanced stages, the patients can no longer communicate because of the difficulty to utter common words or sentences. In the later stages of the disease, the patient is cut off from communicating with family members, friends, and other individuals. The Alzheimers patients usually progress to the unavoidable end of life stage of the disease (Gsell, 2004). Further, I learned that the Alzheimers’ disease is incurable. The patient’s brain slowly disintegrates. Consequently, as the years pass by, the patient need more and more help from other human beings. The human beings include the family members, friends, relatives, neighbors, and healthcare professionals. As the disease progresses, the healthcare professional, especially the nurses like me, must exert more effort to alleviate the effects of the ailments, including giving the patient both food and water (Samadi, 2011). Also, I gained new knowledge showing Alzheimers disease is a mental illness. Logically, mental disease can be described as an in illness that affects or reduces the normal capacities of the brain. The disease may trigger heart attacks (Rosano, 2006). Applying the same logic, Alzheimers disease affects the patient’s brain. The Osmoreceptors malfunction. The osmoreceptors are located within the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is one of the major parts of the brain, especially the human brain. Alzheimers disease is synonymous with Dementia. Psychiatrist classify Dementia is a mental disease (Perry, 2006). Further, clinical experiments have shown that people with abnormally higher plasma homocysteine levels may trigger dementia attacks, including Alzheimers disease. I also learned that caring for an Alzheimers victim is definitely a full time job (Vasudev, 2010). Waiting the patient slow drift away into the bottomless pit called forgetfulness often drains the caregivers. The draining usually affects both the emotional side and the physical prowess of the caregivers. Some caregivers are being too attached to their healthcare clients. on some occasions, the caregivers feel that all their extra efforts have come to naught. Likewise, the caregivers are often at odds with the patients’ spouse and other family members. Some of the patients’ relatives doubt the quality of nursing care service exhibited by the nurse caregivers. Additionally, I learned that the nurse professionals are not robots. The nurse professionals have their own lives to lead. The nursing professionals have their own families to return to. Other nurse professionals return home to help with the household chores. Other nursing professionals also have to take care of the children’s personal and school needs. Additionally, some nurses are sucked into the fearsome burn out phase of their healthcare profession. Burn out occurs when the needs of the patients and the healthcare management saps all the nurses’ energy. Consequently, I gained new knowledge that includes the patients, including the Alzheimer patients, may not receive the minimum care from the energy-drained healthcare professional (Evans, 2007). Sometimes burned out nurses often suffer from constant fatigue, lack of sleep, and unwillingness to seek or accept help from fellow healthcare professionals, the patients’ family members, the nurses’ own relatives, and other persons (Videbeck, 2010). Further, I gained more learning that includes the nursing professional must persuade the Alzheimers disease patient to finish his meal. Sometimes the patients play with their food (White, 2011). At other times, the patients make a mess with their unfinished food. The advanced stage Alzheimers disease patients may not be able to use their utensils, drink water, or feed themselves. The motivation or need to eat food or drink war evaporates. At other times, the patients resist the help of the nursing professionals. The scene clearly shows that the nursing professional must have the dedication and devotion to serve (Martin, 2010). Furthermore, I also learned that the patients refuse to take food or water. Some patients, including the Alzheimers disease patients, prefer to die of hunger than prolong their painful and worthless agony (Bowers, 2008). The nurse must be equipped with the persuasive power to convince the nonresponsive Alzheimers disease patients’ to do their best to survive. For patients who are not capable to drink a glass of water or eat food, especially the Alzheimers Disease patients at their advanced disease stage, the nursing professional or the medical doctor can recommend that other alternative should be implemented (Eikelenboom, 2006). Likewise, I learned that one of the alternatives is to insert the dextrose bottles needed into the Alzheimers disease patients arms. This way, liquids will continue to flow into the patients’ body. However, there is a danger that the forgetful Alzheimer patients may unintentionally remove the dextrose needle or the water tube that brings dextrose water into the patients’ internal processes (Morrison, 2009). Additionally, I also learned that to improve the dehydration results, the nursing professional should be imaginative. The professional must research on the mental status change, weight loss, dry mouth, dry tongue, lessened skin turgor as well as postural hypertension as basis for affirming that the Alzheimers disease patients should take in water. Further, I learned that the nurse professional must learn that the symptoms of dehydration include higher levels of hematocrit, higher levels of serum sodium, azotemia, concentrated urine output, hyperosmolarity, and unequal increase in the Alzheimers disease patients’ blood urea nitrogen affirm that the patient is suffering from dehydration (Hope_Medical_Center, 2005). If you face this issue again in practice what would you do to differently? If I face the same issue again in practice, I would do a different nursing skill procedure. I will use lesser time to persuade the Alzheimers disease patients to drink water. I will use more persuasive words and examples to convince more Alzheimers disease to drink water. Lastly, I will implement better healthcare procedures. With my prior experience on the issue, I have learned to replace some ineffective acts with more effective or convincing patient care procedures (Ratcliffe, 2011). What I will need to do in order to develop my practice in the above area I need further research in order to develop my practice in this area. Further research includes gathering the latest information on dehydration. Research incorporates reading the latest books, including the Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins nursing fundamentals textbooks. I will gather nursing care professional journals. The journals include experiments conducted on the Alzheimers disease topics and the dehydration topics. I will also search the university library for the latest books on my current issue, dehydration of mentally ill patients. Conclusion Dehydration has an influential effect on the mentally ill patients. The research shows that dehydration has debilitating effects on the Alzheimers disease patients. The research indicates that Dehydration may crop up when a patient’s water percentage level lethally declines to life-threatening stages. Evidently, the healthcare professional should guarantee that all the mentally ill patients retain their hydrated status, augmenting my nursing course’s learning outcomes. References: Banta, H. 2004, Health Care Technology, Diane Press, London. Barrett, H. 2003, Field Guide to Appropriate Technolog, Academic Press, London. Bowers, A. 2008, Mental Health and Wellbeing Review for Severe Mental Illness. Primary Care and Community Psychiatry , 13 (4), 162-167. Brender, J. 1997, Methodology for Assessment of Medical IT Based Systems, IOS Press, London. British_Medical_Association. 2009, Health & Environment Impact of Assessment, Cornell University, London. Constable, C. 2012, Withdrawal of Artifical Nutrition and Hydration for Patients. 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