As more of the population is diagnosed with Alzheimer's or another form of dementia, in the future, your business will benefit from knowing how to deal with customers and clients who may be dealing with those conditions. Dementia is not an all-or-nothing deal, where you're either fine or completely unable to deal with everyday life. Instead, you have people along a spectrum, from showing mild symptoms that may be dementia and more. You may also be dealing with caretakers, who have their own needs for understanding and patience. By giving your company dementia-friendly training, you set three changes in motion.

Better Recognition and Communication

One is that your staff will become better able to handle interactions. They're not going to become trained to detect dementia in a medical sense. But they'll be able to learn signs and how best to react once they find out the person they are dealing with has the condition. Your staff will understand more about what might be going on, and most importantly, they'll know how to treat the customer in a respectful way, instead of inadvertently infantilizing or ignoring them.

Emergency Training

If your staff goes through dementia-friendly training, they will have more of an idea of what to do should an emergency happen. If there is a tornado warning, for example, they should be better able to communicate to the person what is happening. If the person shows signs that they're undergoing a health emergency, the staff can better communicate to emergency personnel how to treat the person.

Environmental Changes

Making the physical environment of your business more dementia-friendly is a form of accessibility, but it's not as simple as ensuring doorway widths or certain fonts on signs, although font size and readability are certainly necessary. You should have good lighting and clear passageways, and there should be an area that is fairly quiet so that, if someone becomes overwhelmed or confused, they have a safe space in which to sit and recover. Symbols used on signage need to be easy to interpret, such as very basic gender signs on restroom doors. Training should go through other needs, too.

You can actually go through training that results in certifications that your business is dementia-friendly. Even if you think your staff is pretty well-versed in how to deal with people with all conditions, and even if you think you've got a physical location setup that is friendly, there could be minor issues you've missed. Get that certification, however, and you can rest assured that your company is doing all it can to make itself a friendly space for people with dementia.

For more information, reach out to a company that provides dementia-friendly business certification services.