ABSTRACT

One key transformation within the contemporary hospital ward is the increasing number of patients on them who are living with dementia. This chapter explores the complex ways in which people living with dementia were both seen and at the same time overlooked within these wards, at an organisational level and an individual bedside level. A hospital admission itself has significant adverse impacts on people living with dementia. The treatment or intervention for their acute admitting condition can, in turn, lead to an unintended sequence of multiple medical complications and a cascade of decline in the person, a process known as cascade iatrogenesis. The difficulties ward staff had in recognising, or being aware of, the significant risks of adverse events and poor outcomes for people living with dementia in their care, can be associated with specialism hegemony. There were many individuals, classes of occupations, practices, and types of work, which appeared to be invisible and unrecognised within these wards.