Ever since the DirectCourse/College of Personal Assistance and Caregiving (CPAC) launched in the fall of 2012, the Elsevier sales and marketing force has heard requests from clients and potential purchasers for a course on Dementia Care. After nearly  a year and a half of development, the new Dementia Care course will launch this December, the newest addition to CPAC’s acclaimed curriculum.

The course was written by Research Associates Alice Wong and Mel Neri, both at the University of California, San Francisco in the School of Nursing. The content was reviewed by a member of the CPAC editorial board, as well as a Professional Education Specialist with the Alzheimer’s Association—Northern California and Northern Nevada chapter.

“Writing this course involved culling and organizing the vast resources we found online,” Ms. Neri states.

“For other courses, such as Being Prepared for an Emergency, we were able to re-purpose much of the material from a similar course at the College of Direct Support,” she adds. “Dementia Care was a longer process as we had to develop the content from a wide array of sources. The process began last year, and has been in earnest development for a year and a half.”

The Dementia Course will be in the new “fast-design” format—each lesson is only ten screens, whereas in the past courses could have in excess of fifty screens, or pages. With Dementia Care, lessons are much more succinct and quicker to complete. With “fast-design”, there is only one objective per lesson, and the content is more concise and targeted.

Dementia Care has 27 total lessons, separated into five topical areas.  “This way, people aren’t overwhelmed by 27 lessons all at once,” Neri explains.  The lessons include:

1.                  Basics of Dementia, lessons 1-3

2.                  Caregiver/ Provider[MTN2]  Issues, lessons 4-10

3.                  Behavioral and Communication, lessons 11-17

4.                  Personal Care, Daily Activity, Physical Health, lessons 18-25

5.                  Environmental Adaptation, lessons 26-27

“We had originally thought to do this in two parts—Dementia Care Part One and Part Two,” Neri says. “There is so much information out there on Dementia. We had to make this course manageable for the learners, which is why we separated the content the way we did. This way a learner can focus on specific areas of dementia care while working through the course.”

Dementia Care is yet another in the DirectCourse/CPAC curriculum that helps train and educate caregivers, families, and the individuals receiving assistance. Created by the Community Living Policy Center at the University of California, San Francisco, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota’s Research and Training Center, this online course utilizes the Elsevier Performance Manager, which allows supervisors and managers a variety of tools to measure effectiveness. For more information, please visit the CPAC page on the DirectCourse website.