Rosebridge strives to make long-term care more pleasurable for residents with reservations
Friday, November 10, 2006 -- Natalie Miller
While the reality is for some residents long-term care will never be considered ‘home’, by employing supportive measures caregivers can make the experience more pleasurable and improve quality of life, says a supportive measures specialist.

Regardless of the reason a person enters long-term care; by treating people as individuals staff can tap into their needs, explains Kathy Barr, life enrichment co-ordinator at Rosebridge Manor in Jasper.

“We would constantly reaffirm we’re here for them,” she says.

“We’re not going to force them” to accept the situation but staff can “make life as pleasant as possible. That’s where the challenge is. We have to recognize we’re not going to change their opinion about long-term care but we can make it as supportive as possible and let them share their feelings.”

Kathy says changing the topic to reflect the residents’ interests, friends or hobbies they like or once enjoyed can help. That’s where programming comes in, says Kathy. “We’re trying to introduce new things into their life and give them something they can look forward to.”

For some residents, with less social tendencies, group activities like bingo or entertainment aren’t the answer. Some people naturally aren’t inclined to social settings so staff can’t expect them to change now they have entered long-term care. “We recognize right off the bat bugging them to come to entertainment isn’t the way to go,” says Kathy.

These residents require more individualized supports, says Kathy. For instance, one-on-one support, a supportive measures tool, can work with residents who have reservations about long-term care. Accompanying the resident on a walk, providing a hand massage, using aromatherapy, reading short stories or the newspaper are just a few possibilities, says Kathy.

“It’s up to us to find other things we can introduce into their lives.”

Supportive measures is a practice whereby caregivers focus on individual needs and preferences of residents living with Alzheimer disease or related dementia. By identifying factors that trigger resident disease-related agitation, interventions can be put in place to remove many of these factors from the resident's daily life and reduce the need for psychotropic medications.