My grandfather had the brightest blue eyes. There was always a mischievous twinkle in them: the kind that made you feel like he was in on a secret, or about to start one. We were close in the way that some grandparents and grandchildren are: the kind of close where you don't have to say much. We'd go out to the garden together and pick vegetables. We made jam from the rhubarb. We turned the apples into applesauce. He was, as far as I was concerned, someone who hung the moon.
Then dementia came. And the grandfather I knew (the one with the twinkle in his eyes and dirt on his hands) began to disappear in pieces.
I remember my father talking about him getting away from my grandmother. He was trying to get to work. At his store. A store that had burned down years before. He wasn't confused about who he was. He was living in a version of time where that store still existed, where he still had a job to get to, where the world still made sense in the way it once had. And my grandmother, who loved him deeply, was left to navigate that alone.
There was no roadmap. No one explained what was happening or what to do next. The diagnosis came, and the family was left to figure out the rest on their own.
No one sat with her and explained what was happening in his brain. No one told her that the wandering wasn't stubbornness. It was fear and memory and a nervous system doing its best to make sense of a world that had stopped making sense. No one gave her the words to use, or the strategies to try, or permission to grieve a person who was still standing in front of her.
That experience shaped me. And years later, when I became a physical therapist and started working with patients living with dementia, I realized something uncomfortable: my clinical training hadn't prepared me for dementia care either.
The Gap Between Clinical Training and Real Dementia Care
I had a master's degree in physical therapy. I knew anatomy, biomechanics, rehabilitation, and evidence-based practice. What I didn't have, and what most healthcare professionals do not have, was a framework for understanding dementia as a whole-person experience.
I knew how to treat the body. I didn't know how to meet the person.
Maybe you know this feeling too.
You walk into a room and your patient is agitated, refusing to let you help them get dressed. You try to redirect and it gets worse. You leave the interaction feeling like you did something wrong, except nobody ever taught you what to do right. You go home that night replaying it.
Or you're a case manager putting together a discharge plan for someone with mid-stage dementia, and you realize you're working from guesswork. The family is overwhelmed. The home health team is undertrained. The gap between what this person needs and what's actually in place feels impossible to close.
Or you're a home health aide who genuinely loves your client. You show up every single day. But some days are a battle you don't understand, and nobody has ever taken the time to explain why, or given you the tools to make it different.
This is what undertrained dementia care looks like. Not bad people. Not bad intentions. Just professionals doing their best with incomplete tools, and burning out because of it.
And the people living with dementia pay the price. They receive care that is technically adequate and humanly insufficient. They experience more distress, more behavioral escalation, more loss of dignity. Not because anyone wanted that, but because the dementia care training gap was never filled.
Good intentions are not enough. Compassion is not enough. A quick in-service on dementia (a PowerPoint, a handout, a 30-minute lunch-and-learn) is not enough.
Effective dementia care cannot be learned from a slide deck. It has to be taught: in depth, with context, with space to ask the hard questions and sit with the uncomfortable ones.
That's why I pursued my Certified Dementia Practitioner credential. That's why I became a certified NCCDP trainer. And that's why I teach the NCCDP Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Care Seminar.
What the NCCDP Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Care Seminar Actually Cover
The NCCDP Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Care Seminar is a 7-hour live dementia care training developed by the National Council of Certified Dementia Practitioners. It is one of the requirements for healthcare professionals pursuing the Certified Dementia Practitioner (CDP) credential, and it is, in my experience, one of the most comprehensive dementia education programs available to professionals today.
Earlier this year, the NCCDP curriculum was recognized by the Alzheimer's Association, the world's leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimer's care, support, and research. That recognition is meaningful. It means this content has been evaluated against a rigorous standard and found to meet it.
Over the course of the seminar, we cover:
- The disease process: diagnosis, prognosis, and what's actually happening in the brain
- Communication strategies for dementia care that work, even when language has been lost
- Behavioral responses and what they're really communicating: wandering, repetition, aggression, refusal of care
- Personal care approaches that protect dignity and reduce distress
- Nutrition, environment, and meaningful engagement
- Caregiver stress and burnout: what causes it, what it looks like, and how to address it
- Diversity, cultural competence, and spiritual care
- End-of-life considerations in dementia care
This isn't a surface-level overview. These are 7 hours of in-depth, practical dementia care education, taught live in a small group with room for real questions, real scenarios, and real conversation. You will leave with a framework that changes Tuesday morning.
Who Should Attend Dementia Care Training
If you have ever walked out of a shift feeling like you failed someone with dementia, and you couldn't quite explain why, this seminar was built for you.
The NCCDP Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Care Seminar is designed for nurses, social workers, home health aides, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, case managers, discharge planners, activity professionals, administrators, hospice providers, clergy, and family caregivers. If your work or your life puts you in the room with someone living with dementia, this dementia care training is relevant to you.
Not as a box to check. Not as a line on a resume. As a genuine shift in how you understand, respond to, and care for people living with one of the most complex and misunderstood conditions in healthcare.
How to Register for the NCCDP Dementia Care Seminar
I am offering the next live virtual NCCDP seminar session across two evenings:
- Monday, March 30, 2026 | 5:30-9:30pm EST
- Monday, April 6, 2026 | 5:30-9:30pm EST
The seminar is held on Zoom. Cost is $200 per person and includes your digital student workbook and certificate of completion. A printed workbook is available for an additional $40, which covers printing and shipping. Group discounts are available for organizations sending three or more participants. Nursing CEUs are available through InsPAC in most states for an additional $49.
I keep these sessions small intentionally. Not because of logistics. Because dementia care education deserves space for your questions, space to sit with something that's hard, and space for the conversation that doesn't happen in a large group webinar.
Limited spots are still available.
My grandmother didn't have what you're about to have access to. I can't go back and change that. But I can make sure the people in my community, professionals and family caregivers alike, don't have to navigate this alone.
That's the why. That's always been the why.
Ready to register for the NCCDP Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Care Seminar?
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Questions? Reach me directly at carlyn@abetterwaydementiacaresolutions.com. I read every email
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