Today Rose Cottage was closed for one of our periodic staff training days. We do this at least once a year, and often have training supplied by Denplan who have some excellent trainers who entertain and educate in equal measure.
Today's training was lead by Helen Neville, who talked to us about dementia awareness. As you can imagine, as people live longer we are seeing more and more patients with dementia in our practice.
We started off with a quick quiz about the areas of the brain and what they control; you can see our guesses below
The day certainly opened my eyes to how dementia can affect someone in many different ways, and also that dementia is a disease and not just an inevitable part of ageing.
It was demonstrated quite graphically in this video produced by Alzheimer's Research UK so I thought I'd include it here.
The day also got us thinking about some small changes we may be able to make at the practice to help patients with dementia, so as a team we're going to think about what we can do.
If you have any suggestions please use the comments section to let us know.