While you are creating your care plan, keep in mind the basics of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This pyramid demonstrates the basic way our bodies prioritize needs. The most basic needs are at the bottom, and the most highly evolved needs are at the top. We can’t move up to the next level of needs without meeting all the needs in the level below it. Simply put, you don’t care about having self-achievement if you haven’t established the more basic needs such as food, water, and shelter.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is principle used by psychologists to explain all types of human behavior. But this is important when dealing with someone with dementia because the patients themselves are often unsure which needs have been met, causing paranoia and fear. Therefore it is imperative that we help foster a safe and home-like atmosphere to ensure that the patient feels that these level one needs have been met. We can then move on to meeting higher order needs. This where it can get tricky … It’s not enough simply to do this FOR the person. We need to provide continual reminders that this is being done. The environment should look like home, in whatever form that was to the individual. |