Course Structure and Delivery
Dementia: Understanding the Journey is a Foundational Course
The Dementia: Understanding the Journey course was developed to deliver standardized, foundational education in person-centred care for everyone providing care for people living with dementia, regardless of care setting, work experience, or educational background. While each of the topics offered in this course could be expanded to cover many more hours, the intent of this education is to provide learners with foundational knowledge about dementia and care for people living with the condition.
Course Delivery Requirements
Dementia: Understanding the Journey relies on a collaborative and interactive learning approach that encourages both individual engagement and group interaction. The course is designed to bring the learning content to life and make new knowledge applicable for day-to-day care. Because of the focus on collaborative learning, the course is delivered in facilitated group sessions. The recommended maximum enrollment is 25 learners to support effective large and small group learning activities.
The DUTJ course was developed for delivery over 27 hours divided into 9 sessions of three hours each. The course is ideally offered over a period spanning five to nine weeks. This allows some time for learners to reflect on the material before their learning is applied. The recommended maximum delivery timeframe for delivering the course is four months.
Dementia: Understanding the Journey offers its learners:
- a holistic, person-centered philosophy for understanding dementia
- strategies to maintain a balance between offering support and encouraging independence
- strategies to maintain a person’s identity, dignity, and self-esteem
- strategies to provide quality care using an interdisciplinary team approach
- tools to assist in understanding and responding to behaviours
- Dementia: Understanding the Journey contains 27 content hours and is divided into nine sessions. Each session is designed to be three hours in length with a 15-minute break. The sessions build on each other and aspects of topics overlap, working to reinforce earlier session material. The course is usually delivered over a five to nine week period to allow time to reflect on and/or apply the material introduced in each session. To qualify for the Dementia: Understanding the Journey certificate you must attend all sessions in their entirety and complete a final project. The final project must be approved by your facilitator.
Course Outline
This course is intended to support learners through a person-centred journey of dementia care across nine learning modules, outlined below. Throughout the course, learners are encouraged to think about their learning and to reflect critically on how their own values and beliefs, and the demands of the work setting can impact the delivery of person-centred care.
Session 1: Recognizing Dementia
This session helps learners understand the objectives and structure of the DUTJ course. Session 1 also introduces some foundational learning content about dementia and caring for people living with dementia that will support learners in their progression through the course.
Session 2: The Person Comes First
Session 2 focuses on the foundational philosophy of the course: that the person, rather than
dementia, comes first. The content in this session lays out the principles of person-centred care, its focus and purpose. Learners will also examine issues of autonomy and risk as foundational concerns in caring for people with dementia.
Session 3: Supportive Care – Part 1
Session 3 explores the different settings where learners may provide care and considers their role in encouraging the engagement of persons living with dementia in meaningful interactions. This session also explores person-centred communication and examines issues of risk and choice.
Session 4: Supportive Care – Part 2
Session 4 continues to highlight the learners’ role in providing a supportive care approach that focuses on the capacities, abilities, and preferences of the person experiencing dementia. This module brings a person-centred approach to supporting nutritional and other care needs and considers how the physical environment can support the capacity of people living with dementia.
Session 5: Supporting Family and Friend Partners in Care
This session situates diverse family and friend care partners within a person-centred framework and helps learners think about the ways they may engage and support family and friend care partners throughout their care provider journey.
Session 6: All Behaviour Has Meaning
Session 6 considers how person-centred care reframes behaviours as communication to reinforce the understanding that all behaviours have meaning. In this session learners will explore a number of behaviours commonly associated with dementia and some person-centred strategies for responding to them.
Session 7: Understanding Behaviours and Person-Centred Care Planning
This session continues the exploration of some common dementia-related behaviours with a focus on behaviors that require particular skill to navigate. This session also guides learners through a series of activities allowing them to apply and more deeply explore the core DUTJ concept that ‘all behaviour has meaning.’ Cumulative learning from the DUTJ course is brought together in an extended activity engaging learners in developing a person-centred care plan.
Session 8: Me, Myself, and the Team
This session encourages learners to ‘connect the dots’ between their learning from the DUTJ course and their future aspirations and goals as care providers. Learners explore the importance and value of being part of a diverse care team and reflect on the competing values underlying person-centred and task-focused care. Learners reflect on the stresses attached to the important work they will be doing and explore some ways of managing stress individually and as part of a team.
Session 9: Final Project Sharing and Wrap-Up
The focus of Session 9 is for learners to share their cumulative learning with peers and to meaningfully bring the Dementia: Understanding the Journey course to a close. Successful delivery of the final project is the basis for learners’ completion of the course. Detailed instructions for developing the project are provided in the Guide to the Final Project located at the end of this section.
Qualifying for Course Completion
Facilitators will grant a final grade of Complete/Incomplete for learners in the Dementia: Understanding the Journey course.
To achieve a successful completion of the DUTJ course, learners must:
- Attend all sessions in their entirety.
- Share their final project and have it approved as Complete by the course facilitator.
On successful completion of the course, learners will be emailed a link to complete the certificate process.