Running Head: Alzheimer’s Disease and Nursing Care
Alzheimer’s Patient Course of Disease and Nursing Care Plan
Lisa T. Szewczyk
Delaware Technical and Community College
NUR 125
November 12, 2007
On the fifteenth of October 2007, Ms. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, the very first of the “Baby Boomer” generation to do so, filed for Social Security retirement benefits. According to a Social Security Press Release filed the same day, Ms. Casey-Kirschling, born at 12:01 am on January 1, 1946 is eligible to collect on her retirement benefits in January of 2008 on her sixty-second birthday (para. 1). This momentous occasion ushers in what historians are calling the “graying of America” or the “silver tsunami” (para. 3), in which, over the next twenty years we will see an increase in almost 80 million citizens ageing into the Social Security retirement system (para. 3).
It is expected that Ms. Casey-Kirschling’s generation will not only place a burden on the nation’s retirement system, but will have far reaching consequences to many aspects of the nation’s healthcare delivery system, as well. Most notably, the financial and skilled nursing care aspects of primarily age related disease processes, such as Senile Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
In this paper, we will examine the course of Alzheimer’s disease herein referred to as AD, and it’s effect on our patient, M. S. In gaining a more in-depth understanding of the disease process we can construct a Nursing Care Plan tailored to M. S. that may also be applied to the care of others afflicted with this chronic, incurable disease.
M. S., an 85 year old, widowed, Caucasian female, was admitted to long-term care on February 2, 2006, after a 15-day hospitalization resulting from confusion, falling, and visual and auditory hallucination. M. S. presented with a past medical history of AD, hypothyroidism, non-insulin dependant Diabetes Mellitus (NIDDM), prior stroke, deep venous...