It’s important that senior living communities invest in dementia care education to not only prepare for the 73 million baby boomers aging into the pool of prospective residents, but also to better equip their staff members with the skills they need to create better interactions and outcomes.
That’s according to dementia care expert Teepa Snow, founder and CEO of Positive Approach to Care, who spoke during a Relias webinar last week.
Dementia care education, Snow said, can make a difference when applied appropriately. But when that education is not applied appropriately, life can be challenging for both residents and staff members.
Traditional dementia care, she said, is based on a medical model, run by caregivers who look at what they can and need to do to care for someone. That approach, however, presents a challenge: not seeing people who are living with dementia as having an equal voice and role in their care, Snow said.
Something new — focused on people — is needed, she said.
“How do you change the culture?” Snow asked. “One mind at a time, one opportunity at a time.”
Person-centered care, she said, is a combination of what a person wants and needs, balanced with staff member skills and abilities, as well as their availability.
Changing the culture for staff members caring for people living with dementia begins with understanding that staff members feel abused and neglected because what they’ve been asked to do feels impossible, Snow said. Providing training without skill development means putting people into an environment and asking them to provide care without the knowledge and skills they need to do so.
“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 view staff as having some trauma around working with residents.”
Providers, she said, need to appreciate the needs of both staff and residents. Creating a person-centered culture means seeing the person living with dementia as a person.
“At a national level, we haven’t acknowledged that there’s a skill involved with caring for someone living with dementia,” Snow said. “We’ve got to help people develop that ability so they’re not exposed to trauma.”
Changing culture means transforming the way resources are used so that staff members appreciate the skills they have, as well as their coworkers, leaders and the people they are supporting.
“Knowing people are different, when we treat people as people, we all have similarities,” Snow said. “When we appreciate our similarities, we can better deal with our differences.”
