You are soon to be registered as a nurse and have applied to work in a unit where you will be caring for a diverse range of clients with medical and surgical complexities. You know that approximately 70% of the clients are over 65 years and that many of these have a number of co-morbidities including dementia.

As part of your preparation for interview you have decided to do some research on the ways in which co-morbidity can affect the client with dementia experiencing acute health breakdown (whether from a surgical intervention or acute medical condition) and the ways that you as a registered nurse may assist in their management.

You will need to develop your research into the form of an essay. You may decide to focus on one particular surgical intervention (eg removal/resection of malignancy) or medical condition (eg Parkinson's, atherosclerosis) to narrow down your discussion. Another possibility is that you base your paper's content on a client from practice so that you have something 'real' to work from. However you approach this, you will need to clearly identify and justify your focus, your position or argument and utilize appropriate evidence to support it through logical discussion.

• Include identification and discussion of normal ageing patterns as they link with co-morbidity.
• Overall the paper should clearly demonstrate an understanding of the complexity of caring for older clients with co-morbidity.
• Ensure that appropriate breadth and depth of literature is utilised critically.