“Should carers be able to stay in the hospital with people with dementia?”
– by Regina Shaw
“Regarding the reports today about carers of people with dementia being able to stay in the hospital. This is a really tricky one. Having been a nurse in a children’s hospital I can see the advantages of being able to stay, but the disadvantages are just as much. The disadvantages are having a lot of people around the bed, which can encourage handling people a lot, and the problem of passing on infections to each other if there are a lot of people around. It would mean that there would have to be scrupulous washing of hands and using antibacterial hand washers.
The other problem is that this is a ward specifically for old people with dementia, then there will be an awful lot of bodies in there and that in itself will cause a lot of problems and maybe an increase of accidents, because with lots of bodies comes a lot of baggage. That’s what we found at the children’s hospital. It ended up with us having to provide boxes for the families’ belongings because we ended up with so many items being brought in. On the other hand, the person being cared for will feel more comfortable, feel more happy. Certainly the children did benefit from having parents there. But even then parents could sometimes take advantage and there would be several people around the bed which is not good for preventing accidents as well as for passing on infections.
The hospital where I worked had a McDonald house and this might be a better solution – a similar model for dementia patients. Where there is accommodation provided so that people can be at hand on call to be available if for example a patient wakes up during the night confused not knowing where they are. Then maybe a member of family could be called in if they are available in the building. It’s a huge question really, huge discussion, with so many different sides to it. It will probably take a lot to come to a really satisfactory conclusion. But very interesting, and I look forward to see how it goes and maybe be involved in further discussions about it.”
