The Nursing School of Coimbra (ESEnfC) commemorates the International Day of the Elderly with two conferences, on October 1st and 2nd, which aim at discussing the ways of intervening among the elderly person with dementia.
These conferences are organised by the Scientific-Pedagogical Unit of Elderly Nursing and will be held by Nurse Karina And, Professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Finland. The topic of these conferences is "Therapeutic Validation: an approach to take care of patients with dementias".
In Portugal, there are 92 000 people suffering from dementia and this number shows a tendency to increase due to the ageing of the population, as mentioned by the coordinator of the Unit of Elderly Nursing.
For Professor Maria de Lurdes Almeida, «the situation of illness, with its physical and emotional problems, cannot make us forget that this is an individual with a life's story, integrated in a social, family and historical context, with a very personal knowledge which makes him/her special».
«This complexity in taking care of the elderly person with dementia represents a permanent challenge to try to find new ways to communicate, making it possible for the different actors (older person/ caregiver and nurse) to build a relationship which promotes the development of skills», concludes the Professor of the ESEnfC.
With regard to the lecturer, Karina And has been a Nursing teacher for 32 years. During the past 15 years, she has been responsible for the Nursing Degree Programme at the University of Applied Sciences in Pirkanmaa. She lectures the following subjects: Basics of Nursing, Medical Nursing and Elderly Care.
The conferences will take place on the meeting room of Campus B (Rua 5 de Outubro, in S. Martinho do Bispo) at 2.30 p.m. and will be simultaneously translated.
