Affiliation:
1. Consultant Nurse, London Northwest HealthCare Hospital NHS Trust and BJHCA Board Member
Abstract
The impact of a dementia diagnosis can be devastating to the person with dementia and his or her family. The person and their loved ones have been informed that the person has a progressive disease that affects memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language, and judgement ( World Health Organization (WHO), 2017 ). It is often thought of as a diagnosis of despair; however, if managed well, the diagnosis is an opportunity to enable the person to experience the best possible quality of life and to inform the family of his or her wishes in relation to end-of-life care.