We take a look at some of the new care and nursing books out there for staff and families. Covering a range of topics, these titles off CPD, advice and comfort as well as proving a great resource for activities. Sign up to our magazine for more care and nursing books and look out for book package prizes on our competitions page…
Namaste Care for People Living with Advanced Dementia:
A Practical Guide for Carers and Professionals
By Nicola Kendall (£18.99, Jessica Kingsley Publishers)
Namaste Care is a therapeutic approach to caring for those living with advanced dementia, focused on improving their quality of life through a simple, soothing and rewarding process. This step-by-step guide is for anyone looking to translate the principles of the Namaste Care approach successfully and professionally into a home or care setting, with an emphasis on the value of volunteers in the community in implementing this.
The Namaste Care approach is focussed on giving comfort and pleasure to people with advanced dementia through sensory stimulation, especially the use of touch, and this book provides extensive guidance on every stage of the process, including harnessing community interest, recruiting and training volunteers, and managing pain and discomfort.
In a time of ever-growing strain on healthcare resources, this practical guide is a timely reminder of the power and value of informal care and compassionate communities in helping to care better for people with dementia, and is essential reading for carers, professionals and family members.
In this book:
• The author brings extensive personal experience to the book, having implemented its
processes herself, in her own community.
• Foreword by Joyce Simard, the original developer of the Namaste Care method.
• Extensive detailed information on the actual implementation processes involved in delivering Namaste Care.
• Details of a very cost-effective method of caring for those with advanced dementia; appropriate for current economic strain on healthcare systems.
About the author
Nicola Kendall is a qualified psychotherapist, complementary therapist and mindfulness teacher, as well as the Namaste Lead at St Cuthbert’s Hospice, Durham. She is responsible for setting up a community project involving trained volunteers delivering Namaste Care to people living with advanced dementia at home.
Making Sense of Dementia (Orchard Care Homes) 
If you work in a care environment with people who have dementia you will know that one vital aspect of their wellbeing is continued positive interactions with visits from relatives and friends. But what must it be like for the children who visit? It can be a scary and confusing experience for children.
Orchard Care Homes, a leading provider of high-quality care for the elderly, has launched a new children’s activity book, ‘Making Sense of Dementia,’ designed to develop understanding and remove some of the fear and confusion associated with the condition.
The book features fun traditional games such as mazes, spot the difference, optical illusions, memory tests, word searches and much more. Every activity is linked to the challenges somebody with dementia may face, with many pages asking children to question what they could do to help. By taking part in these activities, children will better understand the difficulties of having dementia as well as empathise and bond with family members who have the condition.
See orchardcarehomes.com to find out more about the book and about how the Reconnect specialist dementia care model will deliver a holistic approach to caring for people with dementia that is significantly improved over traditional dependence on medication.
Evidence-based Practice in Dementia for Nurses and Nursing Students
by Dr Karen Harrison Dening (£24.99, Jessica Kingsley Publishers)
Dr Karen Harrison Dening, editor of Evidence-based Practice in Dementia for Nurses and Nursing Students, discusses why dementia care is changing over time – and what care staff should be taught to ensure they can offer the best support…
More people are living longer in old age, thus we are seeing an increase in both the prevalence and incidence of age-related conditions such as dementia.
Dementia is a term used to describe a syndrome; a collection of symptoms, including a decline in memory, reasoning and communication skills, and a gradual loss of skills needed to carry out daily living activities [1]. The symptoms are caused by structural and chemical changes to the brain as a result of neurodegenerative change and processes. These include tissue destruction, compression, inflammation, and biochemical imbalances. In other words, the process of dementia is the end-stage manifestation of numerous brain disorders [2]. But that is the underlying technical rationale for what is going on; what about dementia care?
Dementia care has changed massively on many levels since my days as a student nurse in the 1970s where people with dementia were contained in ‘back wards’ in large psychiatric hospitals. We saw the advent of such marvels as the ‘Kitwoodian’ approach to person-centred dementia care [3]. Also as the large psychiatric hospitals were closed we saw the expansion in a variety of dementia care settings and range of dementia services, education, technology, validation and revalidation of professional registrations…need I go on?
As I moved through my career, reflecting on my practice and knowledge I would sometimes find myself saying ‘if only I knew then what I know now’ – then where would I be today? What resources might I have benefited from during my years of training and then as an early career nurse? I would have highly valued a book such as this that introduces the knowledge I needed, the evidence base for practice but that also the guidance to transfer this newly acquired knowledge into my everyday practice.
The book was an inspiration following the publication of a very successful series of articles on dementia that ran in a well-known nursing journal between 2015 and 2017, which included 30 individual papers in all from prominent practitioners and academics in the field of dementia care and research. The section editor for the journal approached me and invited me to plan, commission and co-edit on a range of issues and topics on dementia and care for people affected by dementia, including family carers. That was an easy one! I have developed many contacts and networks over the years so finding suitable contributors was easy. Seemingly it became one of longest-running and most successful of all the condition related series the journal had run! There was a huge need for this type of information and it also coincided and responded to the call for improved care of people with dementia and their families in several national policy and guidance documents [4] and this continues to be the case.
Each of the 25 chapters in the book are written by experts in the field of dementia care but specifically I wanted them to approach their chapter by presenting their information in a certain way that would engage the reader by introducing the knowledge and evidence base related to their subject, discussing this through the use of illustrative case studies and then in asking the reader to stop and reflect and apply this new knowledge to their current practice setting. I then presented the chapters into sections to allow the reader to dip in and out to the sections that were more relevant to them. So the initial section set the context of what is dementia, how is it diagnosed, what are the treatment options currently available before going onto dementia in various care settings, such as home, acute hospital, hospice, etc.
In essence I have tried to present the information in such a way as to satisfy my own learning needs would have been all those years ago…’if only I knew then what I know now’. I hope the book helps other professionals, not just nurses, to start with the basics to deliver high-quality dementia care.
For a 20% discount on Evidence-based Practice in Dementia for Nurses and Nursing Students, valid until 31st December 2019, use the code 9956400000 when buying from jkp.com.
This essential textbook on dementia care introduces the knowledge that nurses need, including the evidence base for practice and the guidance to transfer this newly acquired knowledge into everyday practice.
