Intervenção cognitiva na demência

: um contributo para a melhoria da qualidade dos cuidados de enfermagem

Abstract

The current social panorama discloses a gradual increase in the aging of world populations. This fact brings serious social consequences for the economy and for families. In our society, there are many myths associated with aging, the most common being the fact that aging is associate to the resultant cognitive losses of dementia. Even though the treatment of dementia is essentially pharmacological, in our current society, there are several studies that support the benefits of cognitive intervention as a complementary treatment. So it is important to analyze the interventions that help maintain or recover the elder’s functionality, despite their demential process, allowing them to live the best way possible inside their own community. For this matter, the main purpose of this report is to evaluate the effectiveness and the impact of cognitive training to improve memory and other aspects of cognitive functioning of patients with dementia. Subsequently a cognitive training program was applied to a group of nine people with dementia, one or two times per week, with an estimated time of 1 hour in each session, for a period of 10 weeks. The observed results and the results expressed by patients about the program suggest that the cognitive training program that was applied stabilize dementia or have a good result as a cognitive and functional improvement of the patient’s deficits. These results show that the used techniques could be adapted to our reality and could be used by Nurses in their daily practice as a way to improve the quality of the given care.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Alexandra Sarreira Santos (Supervisor)