Adapting to behaviours key to supportive measures
Monday November 12, 2007 -- Deron Hamel
Patience and understanding are important aspects of supportive measures. When residents in a long-term care home exhibit certain behaviours, supportive measures dictates that staff members learn to adapt to these behaviours, says Chris Charlebois of Maplewood.

Charlebois, the Brighton long-term care home’s life enrichment co-ordinator and supportive measures specialist, cites an example of how supportive measures staff is working with a woman who recently moved into the home.

Since coming to the home two weeks ago, the lady, who has a cognitive impairment, regularly packs up her belongings — her clothes, her pictures on the wall and her bedding — and waits by the nurse’s station, believing a bus will be coming to come get her.

When this behaviour surfaced, staff members tried to dissuade the resident from packing her bags. When this didn’t work, supportive measures came into play.

Rather than stop the resident from packing up her possessions, staff now leaves her alone. Staff members will call her for meals and she immediately stops packing up her things and goes to the dining room.

While she has her meal, staff goes into her room and makes her bed, puts her pictures back on the wall and places her clothes in her closet. By the time she gets back to her room, the resident has forgotten about trying to leave.

“I think it’s great the way the staff has been working with her, because they’re supporting the behaviour instead of trying to fight against it,” says Charlebois. “You can’t change the resident, so we have to change what we’re doing.”

Before this supportive measure was used, the resident would become upset and agitated when staff tried to prevent her from packing up her things. After introducing supportive measures, the resident’s agitation decreased.

“It has created more work for the staff, in the sense that they’ve got to redo her room daily, but, at the same time, it takes less time than if they were trying to keep her where she is,” says Charlebois.