Drawing on his 30 years’ experience as a nurse, Trevor Adams has written a book on dementia care nursing. Here, he refers to its contents to explain why nurses should look beyond person-centred and relationship-centred care to consider wider social, psychological and biological systems that help construct a more rounded picture of the needs of people with dementia

The nursing care of people with dementia is carried out mainly by general and mental health nurses, and takes place in a wide variety of settings such as accident and emergency units, orthopaedic wards, people’s homes, long- stay wards and day hospitals (care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP) 2005). My own experience of nursing people with dementia is as a mental health nurse, but my mother developed dementia and this has enabled me to see dementia care nursing from a different angle.