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MENTAL HEALTH CARE


Simple Things


The number of people living with dementia is growing, with Alzheimer’s Society reporting an increase of 40% over the next 12 years. With this figure in mind, Phil Padgett, National Sales Manager and dementia specialist at Essential Healthcare Solutions, discusses what small changes can be made to effectively support those living with the condition.


The lack of training for dementia is by far one of the biggest areas that must be addressed within the industry. Staff, for example, can be allocated shift work on a specialist dementia unit after taking an online training module, which can be completed in minutes. Alternatively, they may have attended a ‘dementia awareness day’ and gone home with their ‘attendance certificate’. But do they 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


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and is unable to fulfil the required rota from their own regular staff, they 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 how to support people living with dementia. To then be allocated to work on the specialist dementia unit is unfair on everyone.


With approximately 80% of all patients in a care home living with dementia or suffering severe memory difficulties, are we letting our older people down by not providing the right training for staff? Dementia understanding and specialist training should be taken much more seriously. Putting the right training in place is something that


we feel very passionately about at Essential Healthcare Solutions.


Training is essential to ensure the best possible care is given, and not just for the direct support workers. We recommend that anyone with the possibility of coming into contact with an individual with the condition, such as cleaners, catering staff and tradespeople, can benefit from some degree of understanding of what the person living with dementia is seeing, hearing and feeling.


Dementia doesn’t just affect memories; it impairs an individual’s cognitive abilities too. Smells, shapes and colours are distorted from what they have typically known as normal. For example, if there was a


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