National Institute of Health Offers Valuable Tool to Help Hospitalize Elders

Thank you Carol what a wonderful and informative post. I would like to add something if you don't mind. Absolutely being proactive in your loved ones care comes first but you can all do things to make their stay a little bit easier. Take their favorite pillow and their favorite blanket. I learned really fast the more I would make Rays room like his at home the easier it was. Who cares if something gets spilled on it. Everything washes and with the new products on the market even if while inserting an IV and they get blood on it you can get it out. You can't take a lot but even a picture on the night stand helps. Familarity is the most important thing for alzheimers patients they are lost in their world and quality care absolutely comes first but after that color up that white sterile enviroment and make it feel like home. Thank you for always being here and helping us all through this time. Connie

Carol, thank you for providing this resource. It is always better to prepare ahead of time, if possible, for our loved one's hospital stay. My Dad hasn't spent time in a hospital for the last couple of years, but at 86-years-old, that situation could change at any time. I really appreciate your detailed and informative articles. Caregivers need all the help they can obtain.

Carol,

Thanks for the website and I will download it for sure. However, my father-in-law always gets worse at his cognition level after each major hospital stay (Nov. 2007, Nov. 2008 and Jan. 2009.) After each stay, he definitely got worse and more confused. The home care nurse said the hospital stay agitates him or confuses him so much that his dementia does get worse. My thinking is that maybe it is coincidence that his dementia got worse and thus he got sicker and went to the hospital. Not that the hospital didn't affect his dementia. Maybe it is both - the  stay and the declining of his brain. I feel maybe the hospital stay gave him some drugs which made him worse. But all these had to be done to save his life.

The info. will help us for sure. But we pretty know that familiar people or caregivers help a lot. He still wanted to escape from the hospital but the caregivers made him calm down and stayed in the hospital room.
There is nothing we can do about his confusion in the hospital stay except being there and assuring him that he is ok and just needs treatments. He is confused and agitated in the hospital for sure. He does not know what is going on when he stays in the hospital for 3 or 4 nights. Prevention is hard because he is very old and needs to go to the hospital at times given his heart failure history.

We never needed to use sedative on him in the hospital. He just came home and rested. The first week after he came home was confusing to him and then later he settled down back home. He is not sure his home is his house anymore. Alzheimer's definitely does not help the hospital stay.

Take care,

Nina