Communication between healthcare professionals and people with dementia: is deception an act of care? Integrated Literature Review

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Joana Cabral da
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/13528
• topic: Comunicação; Cuidados na Demência; Deceção; Demência; Profissionais de Saúde; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Médicas::Ciências da Saúde::Medicina

Introduction: With the great development and consequent investment on healthcare we’ve witnessed in the last decades, there are many chronic diseases gaining relevance, compromising the quality of life in older ages. Dementia is one of the responsible for this; demanding more resources, more medical attention and, consequently, the need to have good communication between health practitioners and patients. Their memory issues and compromised communication capabilities are translated in many behaviour changes. Understanding their needs is a challenge healthcare is currently not ready to satisfy, making it a subject in need of more attention in our society, and therefore worth of analysing what is currently being done. Methods: This integrated literature review analyses studies published from 01/09/2011 to 01/10/2022 focused on the application of deception in PWD, done by healthcare professionals. The Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science and Scielo databases were consulted, and studies that met the defined inclusion criteria were included: studies in Portuguese, English or Spanish; with full text available; clearly targeting PWD of any aetiology, where the concept of lying associated to deception was mentioned, connected with the healthcare professionals’ role. Results: The analysed studies suggest that the process of deception, especially the therapeutic lying, is not well seen between healthcare professionals due to the moral and legal implications, but that it’s rather common throughout the facilities caring for PWD. There have been some guidelines suggested over the years, but they didn’t gather the necessary attention, as there is no legal support, nor enough rapport from the implied PWD as well. It’s seen how it’s considered condonable when looking at the situation from a patient-centred care point of view. Discussion: Given these results, there must be an open discussion about the terms of “deception” and “therapeutic lying” in their application of PWD and their particularities. The taboo around these terms has also to be addressed. More than the moral definition of these words, it’s also needed some legal guidelines, to protect both sides, and ensure PWD have the respect and dignity they need and deserve in their own specific current situation, by validating them, establishing meaningful relationships with them, where they don’t feel inferior, increasing their quality of life.