Phil Padgett, national sales manager and dementia specialist at medical equipment and services provider, Essential Healthcare Solutions, argues that staff looking after those living with dementia need both appropriate training and a proper understanding of the condition. He also sets out some of the basic interior design criteria to consider when fitting out and furnishing facilities to be ‘dementia-friendly’.
According to the Alzheimer’s Society, there are more than 850,000 people in the UK living with dementia, around a third of them residents in a care home. Yet staff within care homes and hospitals often receive minimal training – and in some cases no training at all – in how to effectively support those living with the condition.
Staff can indeed be allocated shift work on a specialist dementia unit after completing an online training module, which can itself be completed in minutes. Alternatively, they may have attended a ‘dementia awareness day’, and gone home with their ‘attendance certificate’. Do they, however, really understand how to support the many different individuals with their own varying dementia challenges?
Living with dementia is already difficult and confusing for the patient, so a regular routine can help to make things a little easier. However, when a care home experiences staff shortages, and is unable to fulfil the required rota from its own regular staff, managers may have to turn to an agency. In these circumstances the agency worker often arrives at the care home with no knowledge of the individuals, the layout of the home, or indeed of how to support people living with dementia. To be then allocated to work on the specialist dementia unit is unfair on everyone.
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