The diagnosis and management of dementia in primary care: development, implementation and evaluation of a national training programme

General practitioners (GPs) and their teams are uniquely situated to achiev e early diagnosis and optimal management in the community of dementia, yet there is evidence of under-diagnosis, under-response to established dementi a, and inadequate management. An educational agenda has been proposed on th e basis of a review of existing studies and a national training programme h as been designed to test the feasibility, acceptability and relevance of th is agenda for primary care workers in the UK. A nationwide programme of wor kshops was successfully implemented, using educational methods based on adu lt learning principles, and received a very positive response from a multid isciplinary audience. This educational agenda has been shown to be congruen t with the reported experiences of primary care workers, particularly GPs. Community psychiatric nurses (CPN) emerge from the findings of this study a s a professional group who might have an important educational role for oth er professionals in primary care.