Outside of My Comfort Zone: Challenges Care-Partners, Facilities, and Persons Living with Dementia Experience When Accessing and Navigating the Acute Care Pathway

Earn While You Learn: Continuing Education Certificate and One (1) Contact Hour Available!

This World Alzheimer's Day, join Rosie Sears for another engaging and interactive learning experience that moves beyond theory and into practice. What happens when a person living with dementia suddenly finds themselves in an unfamiliar environment – the acute care hospital?

This session invites participants to experience acute care through the eyes of persons living with dementia, caregivers, and healthcare teams. Through storytelling, participant interaction, reflection, and realistic acute care case scenarios, attendees will explore the unique challenges faced by persons living with dementia, caregivers, and healthcare teams as they navigate the acute care journey across emergency departments, inpatient units, and transitions home.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to: 

• Describe the lived experience of persons living with dementia navigating acute care environments.
• Recognize how acute care processes and environments may contribute to confusion, distress, responsive behaviours, delirium, and functional decline.
• Differentiate between dementia, delirium, distress, unmet needs, and responsive behaviours.
• Identify person-centred strategies that preserve dignity, function, and personhood throughout hospitalization.
• Apply practical approaches to communication, mobility, and care planning for persons living with dementia, using real-world acute care scenarios.
• Explore ways to incorporate familiar routines, meaningful activities, and strengths-based approaches into acute care practice.
• Recognize the critical role of care-partners and "knowing the person" when supporting individualized care.
• To differentiate personal and organizational comfort zones when caring for persons living with dementia in acute care hospitals.
• Identify need for the creation of more dementia-friendly acute care environments and care processes.
• Translate learning into actionable strategies that can immediately be implemented within participants' own clinical settings.

Attendees will have the opportunity to earn One (1) Contact Hour by participating the entire session and submitting the Evaluation Form at the end of the session. Provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing. Provider Number #CEP17028.