09/04/2026
Sometimes you don’t truly understand someone’s experience until you walk through it yourself. 💙 Our Harmony Square Director (Kate Berwanger, CDP) created a dementia simulation designed to help our clinical team experience firsthand some of the challenges a person living with dementia may face.
Staff were equipped with:
🧤 Gloves to interfere with tactile and sensory function
đź‘“ Glasses that distorted vision and limited peripheral vision
🔊 An extremely disorienting auditory experience to create sensory overload
Then came four seemingly simple tasks:
đź§˝ Clean up a spill at the sink
🧦 Match two pairs of socks
📝 Write down today’s date
…and more.
But there was another catch.
While they worked, Kate intentionally disrupted their experience—brushing past them, getting in their way, interrupting with statements like or “What are you doing that for? I asked for the yellow marker,” and even stepping in to take over the task when they weren’t working quickly enough.
Suddenly, tasks that would normally take seconds became frustrating, confusing, and overwhelming. That feeling of “I’m trying my best, but I just can’t seem to get this right”? That’s the lesson. For four minutes our caregivers and nurses experienced what it can feel like when the world around you isn’t making sense and how quickly a simple task can become incredibly difficult.
The goal wasn't to perfectly recreate dementia. It was to build empathy. To shift the question from “Why won’t they just do it?” to “What might they be experiencing right now, and how can I help?”
A powerful learning experience for our team and another step toward providing care that is more patient, more compassionate, and truly person-centered. đź’™