It is important that senior living communities invest in dementia care training to not only prepare for the 73 million baby boomers who will join the pool of potential residents, but also to give their staff the skills they need to create better interactions and outcomes.
This is according to dementia care expert Teepa Snow, founder and CEO of Positive Approach to Care, who spoke during a Relias webinar last week.
Education about dementia care, Snow said, can make a difference if done correctly. But if that education isn’t done correctly, life can be challenging for residents and staff alike.
Traditional dementia care, she said, is based on a medical model, delivered by caregivers who consider what they can and need to do to care for someone. But that approach presents a challenge: People living with dementia are not viewed as equals and do not have an equal role in their care, Snow said.
Something new needs to be done that focuses on people, she said.
“How do you change the culture?” asked Snow. “One mind at a time, one opportunity at a time.”
Person-centered care, she said, is a combination of a person’s wants and needs, matched with the abilities and skills and availability of staff.
Changing the culture for staff caring for people with dementia begins with understanding that staff feel abused and neglected because the tasks they are expected to do seem impossible, Snow says. Training without skills development means putting people in an environment and asking them to provide care without having the knowledge and skills to do it.
“I think we need to think about trauma-informed care for our staff,” Snow said. “If I want to change the culture, I need to look at the staff as people who are traumatized by working with the residents.”
Providers, she said, must consider the needs of both staff and residents. Creating a person-centered culture means seeing the person with dementia as a human being.
“At the national level, we have not recognized that caring for people with dementia requires a certain skill,” Snow said. “We need to help people develop that skill so they are not exposed to trauma.”
A cultural change means a transformation in the use of resources so that employees value their skills as much as their colleagues, superiors and the people they support.
“When we treat people as people, we know they are different. We all have things in common,” Snow said. “When we value our similarities, we can better deal with our differences.”
