Virtual Dementia Experience Arrives in Trowbridge

An interactive training experience dubbed the ‘Dementia Bus’ has given local care experts and members of the community an insight into what it’s like to live with dementia.

As a local home care provider we decided to host the mobile dementia simulator in Trowbridge, giving our staff and others from Trowbridge Health Centre the chance to experience first-hand the daily challenges faced by people living with dementia.

Provided by Training2Care, the mobile dementia simulator gives a person with a healthy brain the chance to experience what dementia might be like by replicating different symptoms and challenges faced by someone with the condition.

Participants wear mittens in a thick material to impair their ability to perform tasks or hold items, wear headphones and glasses with altered lenses to impair their vision and make them feel disorientated and navigate dark rooms with coloured lights to add to the disorientation and overall frustration.

Participants also wear spiked insoles in their shoes to cause a pins and needles sensation – a symptom of peripheral neuropathy.

The medically proven training method encourages people to understand what they can do to reduce frustration and improve the experiences of a person with dementia.

Through our offices in Bradford-on-Avon and Chippenham, we work with many customers and their families across local areas to support them to stay safe and well at home for as long as possible – including those living with dementia and their families.

Dr Nigel Gough, local GP and Director of Bluebird Care Wiltshire North said:

“We were delighted to organise joint training with NHS staff in Trowbridge having previously done joint training with Hathaway surgery in Chippenham. Using the mobile dementia simulator  helps increase our staff’s  understanding about how to support those living with the condition."

“This training has shed a new light on the many different symptoms that a person with dementia can experience. Staff were thoroughly moved by the whole experience.”

“We are proud to host and sponsor the mobile dementia simulator, as we aim to train all of our staff to be dementia friends as well as champions raising awareness and empathy for people living with the dementia in north and west Wiltshire”.

Norma who attended the Mobile Dementia Simulator, commented:

“I’m extremely grateful to Bluebird Care Wiltshire North for organising the mobile dementia simulator experience and allowing me to gain a valuable insight into dementia.”

“The ‘dementia bus’ has made me consider the ways in which I communicate and care for people living with dementia, and I will be definitely recommending some of my own colleagues to try it.”