Assess Your Knowledge

This section of the ELDAC Dementia Toolkit provides:

  • The opportunity for you to evaluate your learning and development needs in providing palliative care and advance care planning for older people with dementia, and create a dementia personal learning plan.
  • Educational resources to help improve your knowledge, skills and confidence in providing palliative care and advance care planning for people living with dementia.

Assessing your dementia knowledge

The Dementia Knowledge Assessment Tool Version 2 (DKAT2) [1, 2]  was developed by Australian researchers to assess knowledge of dementia. Below there is an interactive DKAT2 form with 21 statements to answer. At the end of the assessment you can see how many statements you got correct and identify areas where you might need to focus your learning. The DKAT2 can be repeated at your annual review.

Step 1 of 3

Here are some statements about dementia. Please read each statement carefully and place a tick in the box to show if you agree or disagree with the statement, or if you don’t know. It is important to tick only one box (yes, no or don’t know) for every statement.
1. Dementia occurs because of changes in the brain.(Required)
2. Brain changes causing dementia are often progressive.(Required)
3. Alzheimer’s disease is the main cause of dementia.(Required)
4. Blood vessel disease can also cause dementia.(Required)
5. Confusion in an older person is almost always due to dementia.(Required)
6. Only older adults develop dementia.(Required)
7. Knowing the likely cause of dementia can help to predict its progression.(Required)

ELDAC dementia personal learning plan

After you have completed the Dementia Knowledge Assessment Tool Version 2 (DKAT2), consider these recommendations:

  • Identify three areas where you need to improve your dementia knowledge. You may need to improve your basic knowledge of dementia or you might want to learn more about how to provide palliative care or advance care planning for people living with dementia.
  • Create a dementia learning plan. You can use the ELDAC Dementia Personal Learning Plan (pdf) to document your learning needs and review this annually with your supervisor.
  • Browse the recommended educational resources below after you have identified your learning needs and areas where further training is required.

Create your personal learning plan (pdf)

Improve your dementia knowledge

ELDAC Dementia Toolkit Clinical Care

This section of the Dementia Toolkit has specific educational opportunities that can help meet your learning needs, which are based on each element of the ELDAC Care Model.

Dementia Australia

  • The Dementia Guide is a comprehensive resource to help both staff and people living with dementia and their families and carers to have a better understanding of dementia. The guide also includes information on the treatments, support and services available. Section 9 of the Dementia Guide focuses on the later stages of dementia.
  • Ask Annie is an app that provides on-the-go dementia training for care workers. There is a course on providing a palliative approach to dementia care, which has 4 modules.

Dementia Training Australia (DTA)

  • DTA provides an extensive online library of courses and individual modules for the Australian aged care workforce. Registration is required to access the free resources catering to a range of knowledge and skills levels, which are labelled as introductory, foundational and enhanced practice levels.

Page updated 23 September 2026