There aren't enough dementia providers in Arizona. This unique campus offers training

Arizona has the fastest growth rate of Alzheimer’s disease in the country. Yet there are not enough paid caregivers or even geriatricians — only 92 in the entire state — for this population. So how do you educate, even inspire, health care students to care about dementia? As the saying goes, if you build it, they will come.

Judy Ward is chatting with three nursing students from Creighton University when a group of preschoolers toddle on by.

“I used to, when I did not have dementia, I used to go around to the schools and teach the kids fun things, and I miss that,” she explains.

The children attend a care center located at Hospice of the Valley’s Dementia Care and Education Campus in Arcadia. That’s also where Judy’s adult day club for people living with dementia is situated, along with a 12-bed assisted living community and a hospice unit.

“But that was in the past,” she says. ” “I’m moving on to something different now. … It really doesn't bother me. This is who I am, and this is what I can do, and this is what I can't do.”

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There’s a lesson in that, and she’s sharing it with the nursing students here on this day. It might sound unconventional but according to dementia experts, caring for people like Judy comes down to being present, patient and able to meet the person where they’re at — whether it's in the early stages or end of life.

“I think it's the greatest thing in the world. … I think it gives them a real chance to see how we really react to things," Judy said.

Because like she tells the students at her table, people living with dementia are just people.

“Treat us normal. That's the thing. Treat us normal. We're not the crazy people that people think we are," Judy said.

Future health-care professionals learn dementia best practices

Maribeth Gallagher is Hospice of the Valley’s Dementia program director. Earlier, she was instructing those nurses talking to Judy and roughly a dozen other health-care providers on some of the best practices when it comes to dementia care.

“And so the goal is how do we care, skillfully and compassionately, for every person living with dementia and every person who is their care partner?”

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Things like talking slower, using humor, gesturing to show what to do, using a warm blanket or chocolate to help calm a person down and validating what the person is saying, instead of arguing with them.

Lessons not typically taught in medical or nursing school, but necessary she says to live well with dementia.

“I ask how much dementia education they've received, they say like, maybe 15 minutes, and it's more about the pathology of the amyloid beta plaques and stuff, but not, ‘how do I communicate effectively with people living with dementia?’”

A dream scribbled on a piece of paper

Dr. Gillian Hamilton is the medical director of the Supportive Care for Dementia program at the campus. This place was also her brain child, an idea she had jotted down on a piece of paper in 2017.

“This is very unique. There is nowhere like this,” in the entire country, Hamilton says.

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“So we now have 350 medical students and residents who come through every year and get to see that dementia can be meaningful, life enhancing and a joy for people.”

And the education provided by Hospice of the Valley, like the training, is free for these medical and nursing students. They’re also doing something else: training family caregivers.

Caregiving is a costly proposition. Most Americans don’t earn in a month what it costs for private care at home or in an assisted living community.

This leaves many families to figure it out with little or no prior preparation.

“And they come to workshops here, and our occupational therapist works with them to show them what's the best way to set up a meal so that people will want to eat," Hamilton say. "What do you do if the person doesn't want to get in a shower?”

'It really blew me away'

Andrew Eshe is a senior education consultant at the Center to Advance Palliative Care, which is part of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. When he heard about this place, he was skeptical.

“Like this isn't going to be reproducible," Eshe says. "This is probably a great thing, but how could anybody else ever replicate this?”

So when a conference brought him to Phoenix, he decided to visit.

“It really blew me away. You know, caregiver training? It's just not the norm in health care to be thinking about caregivers and what they're experiencing and what it might be like for them to take care of somebody who's suffering with dementia," Eshe says.

The other thing that got Eshe excited is the number of future medical providers being exposed to some of the best practices in dementia care.

“So, I think the more people we can expose to models that work, models that are respectful of the patient and family, respectful of the journey that the patient and the caregiver are on, and attentive to the needs of those patients, that creates not only good clinicians in the future, but it creates advocates," Eshe said.

And they’re the ones, he says, who will transform health care for people living with dementia, a condition that affects 7 million Americans today. That number will almost double by 2050.