Review: Dementia Compass – an online course 

Ward, J. (2025) ‘Review: Dementia Compass – an online course’, Journal of Dementia Care, 33(6) p. 23

Jane Ward reviews Dementia Compass, a free online training resource designed to help carers, families, and professionals understand and respond to dementia 

This online course provides a lot of very useful information and covers some of the most challenging areas within dementia care. Most of the information is given via bullet points so you are able to navigate through the course fairly quickly but it may have benefitted from a little more elaboration in places. I have completed several different dementia courses in the past so I started the course with some knowledge already, but I’m not sure it has the depth of explanation for someone new to this area. There are some links to further resources in the Person-Centred Care Module, and I would have liked to see additional links throughout the course to enable the learner to easily access more in-depth explanations where they need it. 

There are still areas under development which is a little disappointing although you are able to sign up to be notified when they have been completed.  

There are some really useful interactive exercises where you are given a scenario and several options for responses. I found this very useful though the site didn’t seem consistent in allowing you to check the feedback for all of the response options. In a couple of cases you were only able to see feedback on the response you selected. Where  possible, checking the feedback for all of the responses would provide an extra level of learning.  

There are some interesting interactive simulations in the course where you can apply a filter to see how someone with dementia may view their world with variations in visual perception. It will be interesting to see the auditory and cognitive simulations when they are added. 

Once you get used to the site it is fairly easy to navigate and you are able to dip in and out of modules very easily.  
I would certainly recommend this online resource to anyone wishing to refresh existing knowledge, and I will certainly use it as a revision tool.