![]() Dementia is prevalent among older patients in German acute-care hospitals. It was established in 2011 and was the first specialized ward for internal medicine in Germany that was specifically tailored toward dementia patients. The David Ward is an internal ward especially for dementia patients who have been hospitalized as the result of another acute illness. “We don’t want to put on a performance for them, but we also don’t want to keep confronting them with a reality that, for the most part, they don’t really see anymore.” “The patients are in their own world,” says the nurse. Schulz sits down next to the “Waiting Room” sign and watches the goings-on in the ward for a long while. Treating dementia patients with dignity requires empathy and, in many cases, creativity. “We could have designed this to look like a bus stop, too,” says the head nurse, “but that would’ve meant deceiving the patients.” After all, the bus would never come. Nurse Svenja Ostojic gently takes hold of the man’s elbow and guides him to a seating area designed to look like a waiting room. Like all the patients in the David Ward of the Evangelisches Krankenhaus Alsterdorf (EKA), a hospital in Hamburg, he suffers from severe dementia. ![]() He feels the urge to leave, but the life he wants to return to is in the distant past. ![]() An older man in corduroys shuffles slowly down the bright hallway, turns around, and shuffles back the same way he came. ![]()
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