Summary STUDY GUIDE for C475 Care of Older Adult Objective Assessment | Western Governors University - NURS C475; Exam questions are taken from the Learning Objectives under the 9 Competencies:

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 Promote evidence-based practice by utilizing the Beer list of potentially unsafe medications for the elderly.  Contribute to interdisciplinary plans of care to promote health, reduce risk, an... d prevent disease in older adults.  Contribute to interdisciplinary care plans that address common acute and chronic health conditions, such as arthritis, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases that may lead to congestive heart failure, and dementia.  Consider potential drug side effects in assessing adverse symptoms in older adults.  There are three types of assessments: Physical, Cognitive and Functional.  Physical assessment is assessing the patient’s physical health. It included vital signs, assessing for pain, blood pressure problems, irregular heartbeat, abnormal breath sounds, etc. you know these because as a nurse you are always assessing the patient. In addition, for older adults you want to assess cognitive function.  Functional assessment is assessing what the older adult can still for themselves. Bathing, eating, getting dress, brushing their teeth and more are functional abilities. Functional abilities can be altered due to physical impairment and illness. Dr. Katz and Dr. Barthel developed ADL/IADL indexes to measure the patients functional abilities. You should have noticed that ADL is used throughout the book. This is because the ADL's can determine the patient's care plan. It determines whether they are safe in the current environment. It impacts their ability to participate in health promotion and disease prevention.  Cognitive- thought processing, thinking and reasoning skills. Know the normal cognitive changes as a result of aging. Dementia is not normal. You will need to understand the difference between delirium & dementia.  Delirium: Acute  Dementia: Chronic  There are special tools to assess the older adult that have been proven to produce accurate results. You must be familiar with those tools specific for the older adult. The exam will use the acronyms for the tools. For example, CAM, MMSE, CDT, SPICES. Make sure you know what these stand for and can answer when they are to be used or what the results of these assessment tools will tell you. o CAM- confusion assessment method – to assess for delirium. o MMSE- mini mental state examination—to assess cognitive function. (The most extensively used cognitive assessment tool***) o CDT- clock drawing test—used during the mini cog (draw a clock and re [Show More]

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