6 GEMS® You Need to Know For A Positive Approach to Dementia Care

By Valerie Feurich, Positive Approach to Care Team Member

Caring for a person living with dementia is not easy. Not only can challenging situations arise at any moment, but the traditional medical model caregivers might be confronted with by their well-meaning physician exudes a very negative outlook.

Commonly used scales, such as the Global Deterioration Scale / Reisberg Scale, exclusively focus on what a person has lost as they transition through the different stages of dementia.

Yes, as of the time of this writing, there is no cure for dementia. And yes, all types of dementia are terminal. But what none of the commonly used scales take into consideration, is that people living with dementia can still enjoy a rewarding life.

This is particularly the case if their caregiver, or care partner as we like to call them here at Positive Approach to Care® (PAC), is using Teepa Snow’s GEMS® dementia state classification model.

Unlike the traditional models, the GEMS® States Model focuses on the skills and abilities a person still has, not what they have lost. Instead of looking at people as less, Teepa’s model encourages care partners to see what the person living with dementia still has left and is still able to do.