Caring for individuals living with dementia requires knowledge, compassion, and practical skills. This learning module provides Health Care Aides with an understanding of dementia, challenging common myths about aging, and explores the physical, emotional, and cognitive changes clients may experience.

Through a person-centred approach, HCAs will gain practical strategies to support safe care, effective communication, and nutritional needs, while also reflecting on their own experiences as health care professionals. This module provides the HCA with tools needed to provide respectful, responsive, and safe care to clients living with dementia across care settings.

By the end of this module, HCAs will:

1. Identify the stages, signs, and symptoms of dementia.
2. Discuss dementia as an unexpected part of aging.
3. Understand personal feelings and experiences as they relate to caring for clients with a dementia diagnosis.
4. Identify causes of dementia, compare reversible and non-reversible dementias, and describe the stages of progressive dementias of the Alzheimer’s type.
5. Examine dementia, its effects on the different body systems, and implications for caregivers.
6. Discuss care strategies related to providing safe, culturally sensitive, person-centred care to the client diagnosed with dementia.
7. Examine factors related to dementia that create barriers to effective communication.
8. Identify communication strategies to manage and prevent responsive behaviors when providing care
9. Identify strategies to assist clients with nutritional challenges