Pre- Hospital Elder Life Program Assignment

Delirium is an abrupt change in cognition and disturbance in consciousness, It develops very fast and is usually reversible and most often is preventable. It occurs too often and is a problem for older adults. Ways to prevent dementia are getting people up and moving after surgery or during hospital stays and orientating the patients frequently to person, place, time, and event. Other important aspects are making sure that the patients can communicate most efficiently such as making sure they have access to glasses, hearing aids, and dentures. I have cared for many patients experiencing delirium as a CNA this summer. The patients I have worked with generally just seem confused about the care that they are receiving and don’t fully understand why they are in the hospital. They become confused about the many healthcare staff taking care of them and can become combative and agitated. This makes it challenging to give them the best care because they don’t understand why they need IV’s or things like that.

My goals are to be kind and have a caring attitude while trying to orient patients at risk of developing delirium. I want to be able to talk with older adults and help prevent prolonged hospital stays for them. I also want to learn more about delirium because that is something that is very prevalent in hospitals and I will be a nurse in that setting. I am not nervous about this volunteering opportunity because I have had clinical at Maine Med already and am very familiar with the setting. I also worked as a CNA all summer with dementia and delirium patients so I have experience with those topics. There is no HELP program at Maine General in Augusta that I know of and they have a lot of patients developing delirium. It was really hard to see also the amount of patients with delirium and dementia that were just waiting for placement because no nursing homes had any openings for them.