TRANSCRIPT
Dementia is a health condition that comes with many challenges.
It can affect people's memory and their ability to perceive their surrounding environment.
Marie Alford, Head of Dementia Support Australia, explains some of the changes.
"People can have sensory changes, which means their spatial awareness might change so they might have trouble finding their way, navigating through familiar spaces. But people become very confused. And so, that confusion can lead to feelings of anxiety. And that anxiety might present as agitation or aggression. And that's really again around their inability to understand the environment and what's happening around them."
But those challenges can also affect the people around them.
One prime example are emergency service workers, or first responders, who can be called in to deal with dementia patients in places like hospitals and nursing homes.
Isabelle Meyer is the Executive Director of Dementia Training Australia.
"The government has decided to fund a special initiative to provide bespoke training for emergency services, police forces, ambulance officers, paramedics around Australia, our first responders, so that they can improve their awareness of the kinds of behaviours that often manifest when people are living with dementia as a disease."
Ms Meyer says the aim of the one-hour online course is to help first responders be better equipped to defuse situations that could escalate.
"So, the course is a very short course, it's very focused on understanding what happens to the brain. It's also focused on de-escalation strategies, so that a first responder can take things down a notch. Keep people safe from harm. And make sure that a person living with dementia is cared for."
More than 400,000 Australians are reported to be living with dementia and a large number of them are from diverse communities where English is not their first language.
Dementia can affect how a bilingual person communicates in their second language, with many people losing their English-speaking skills.
Isabelle Meyer from Dementia Training Australia says this new online course also provides methods for first responders to handle patients who might not speak English.
She says those methods are mainly focused on body language.
"So, one of the things that we've produced as part of the training that we're discussing is a guide to dementia-friendly communication that's not dependent on people having English as a first language. But it is about establishing rapport with the person. Because it's not often the case that you will find, even in residential care facilities, that someone has access to someone who might speak their native language."
Ms Meyer adds it's quite common for people from diverse backgrounds who have dementia to rely on non-verbal communication.
"One of the things our course teaches is to be aware of when someone with dementia is communicating with you in a non-verbal way. And our experience says that often, with people from non-English speaking backgrounds, they do use a lot of non-verbal communication. So, they will touch their face if they're hurt or pull at their clothing if they have an injury. If they're feeling agitated or distressed they might put their hands over their body. And our course is designed to train first responders to identify that that's actually a form of communication and something that they will need to respond to."
