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Using signs and symbols to identify hospital patients with a dementia diagnosis: help or hindrance to recognition and care?

Featherstone, Katie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4999-8425, Boddington, Paula ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0859-3678 and Northcott, Andy 2020. Using signs and symbols to identify hospital patients with a dementia diagnosis: help or hindrance to recognition and care? Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics 10 (1) , pp. 49-61. 10.1353/nib.2020.0026

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Abstract

Signs and symbols may be used in attempts to direct attention to particular aspects of patient care and hence affect how the patient is seen. An ethnography within five hospitals across England and Wales explored how everyday technologies are enrolled on acute wards to drive attention to the existence, diagnosis, and needs of people living with dementia within their ageing population. We explore how signs and symbols as everyday "technologies of attention" both produce and maintain the invisibilities of people living with dementia and of the older population within those wards and bring about particular understandings of the classification of dementia. The use and reliance on signs and symbols to aid recognition of people living with dementia may inadvertently lead to misclassification and narrow attention onto particular aspects of bedside care and "symptoms," competing with a wider appreciation of the individual care needs of people living with dementia and restricting expertise of ward staff.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Healthcare Sciences
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISSN: 2157-1732
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 5 June 2020
Date of Acceptance: 2 January 2020
Last Modified: 07 Nov 2023 22:22
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/132212

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