Let me tell you a story of a resident I used to care for a long time ago, his name is Walter, and how we managed his behavior.

Every day, about three o'clock in the afternoon, Walter would begin to yell, "I'm a bad man!" over and over. And he would do this all the time. The irony with his repetitive verbalization was that Walter used to be a pastor when he was younger. But as soon as this behavior would start up, instead of giving him a medication to manage his behavior, we (the nursing home staff) knew we just needed to take him out to have a cigarette and he would stop for an hour or so.

If a patient with advanced Alzheimer's is a lifelong smoker, it’s highly unlikely that we can change that behavior. So while smoking isn't ideal, it was one way to manage Walter’s disruptive behavior in a non-pharmacological way by giving him what he needed at that time, which in this case was nicotine, when he wasn’t able to directly tell us he wanted a cigarette.

Learn more by tuning in to this new episode of This Is Getting Old: Moving Towards An Age-Friendly World—Repetitive Verbalizations & Alzheimer's Disease. [ Ссылка ]

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