Staff training and turnover in Alzheimer special care units: Comparisons with non-special care units - More dementia-specific training resources should be made available to all staff to improve training effectiveness and reduce turnover.

Nursing facility staff may not be properly trained to deal with behavioral symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. We collected data about specialized dementia training and turnover among licensed nurses and nursing assistants in 400 nursing units in 124 Minnesota nursing facilities. Staff training may affect the retention of paraprofessional and professional nursing staff A diversity of training methods, including workshops or seminars, films or videos, outside consultants, reading materials, training manuals, in-house experts, role playing techniques, or an orientation program for new staff might be used to develop more effective training programs and reduce rates of nursing assistant turnover.