Do you study how to improve your talent in senior living?
Are you improving your mind on a regular basis?
What books are you reading to improve your attitude?
Do you have time to take a lunch?
Are you scheduling rejuvenation time?
Or is it easier to say, “I am too busy!” And you work through lunch again?
Burnt out employees in senior living can become cranky and irritable. It can affect the quality of service to senior residents. The grouchiness can wash into home life too.
Do yourself a favor and invest in yourself and your team.
Start a new book review with your senior living sales or operations team.Read one chapter a week or two chapters a month. Select a book and have each person apply the principles in each chapter to his or her senior living position.
One of my teams is reading, “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full.”Its focus is written for retirement communities, but the principles can easily be converted to assisted living, skilled nursing or memory care communities. Feedback from teams on a nationwide basis has insisted this book has helped their occupancy grow.
My sales teams are currently reading, “How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling,” and, “The Greatest Salesman in the World.”“The Greatest Salesman in the World,” book has you read a scroll three times a day for one month before you move onto the subsequent scroll with the next principle. This is the third time in my life reading this book daily for 10 months. Each time it changed my life in a positive significant way.
Start growing yourself and your team! Watch your attitude soar! The occupancy will follow in an upward direction. It is guaranteed!
Diane Masson has worked in senior housing for 18 years and is the regional marketing director for two debt-free Continuing Care Retirement Communities in Southern CA (Freedom Village in Lake Forest and The Village in Hemet). Her first book “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” is being utilized by senior housing professionals across the country. Both her first book and second book, “Your Senior Housing Options,” have 5-star ratings on Amazon.com.
Can you ever trust a retirement or assisted living community to take care of your mom better than yourself or a family member? Long distance relationships are never easy. Add dementia and hearing loss to the story and long distance communication with a senior parent is impossible.
The only way you really know if your mom or dad is okay is to have eyes on them for yourself. My husband just went 1000 miles by plane, two hours by car and a 20-minute ferry ride to visit his mom, Amy. One year ago, she was hospitalized after her husband had a heart attack. After the trauma of her husband (who was her caregiver for five years) being hospitalized, she eloped and the police had to bring her home. Amy is now in her third licensed assisted living community.
How do you evaluate the care of your senior parent? What should you be looking for or asking about on a one-day long-distant visit?
First, how does mom look? Is her hair washed? Are her clothes clean? Do the other residents look well cared for? The answer to all of these for my mother-in-law was good and yes!
Can she feed herself and how much can she consume? Always stay for at least one meal. My mother-in-law ate three plates of food over four hours by herself and asked for dessert. A year ago, she never wanted to eat, so this was a huge improvement.
Does she know your name? Can she hear? How does she communicate with the caregivers? My mother-in-law introduced my husband (her son) by his full name to a caregiver and said, “This is my number one son.” It was difficult for my husband to communicate with his mom in the dining room, it had too many distractions and was too loud. One-on-one, she could communicate and hear better. Plus, the caregivers actually bent down to talk to her – very nice!
What is mobility like? Is it better or worse? Invite them for a walk to determine the current status quo. The memory care layout can be shaped like a square inside. So they can walk all the way around the square without going outside. Amy and my husband walked it 25 times. She always used her walker and this was a huge improvement.
Observe the activities or it’s even better to become engaged with your dementia parent. Unfortunately not one activity happened at the memory care community on Saturday. One activity was scheduled and it never took place.
Watch the caregivers’ treatment and management of the other residents. This better be good or you need to move your parent ASAP. Amy’s caregivers were super. They treated all the residents well and managed an entire room full of dementia residents simultaneously.
Here was the report card for Amy and the memory care community.
Cleanliness of all residents: B+
Taste of food: B+
Communication with mom: C (The severity of her hearing loss is dictating this score.)
Caregivers interacting with residents: B+
Activities offered: D+ (They did offer to paint her nails or it would have been an F.)
Building layout and community spaces: A
Some of you may want a care conference to meet the key staff like the administrator and the nurse. You can learn exactly what types of care they are providing and details about medication management. We had one of those a few weeks ago, so my husband wanted to spend all his limited time with his mom.
You have to see mom or dad for yourself. Please have one local relative with eyes on your senior.We are so lucky that my sister-in-law does a super job with this. Her regular visits have improved Amy’s mind, attitude and appetite.
Good luck with your long distant visit and hopefully these tips will help you.
If you have a long distant parent, please share your experience in the comment section.
Here’s a quick summary of “Your Senior Housing Options,” including the costs and consequences from tips2seniors.com. It walks you through a dementia scenario including all the choices for a vulnerable senior. This video can empower an independent senior to plan ahead or help an adult child put their parent in a quality senior community.
Do you know a senior(s) who has mild to moderate Alzheimer’s? This article will share what a clinical trial is testing and how far along in the Alzheimer’s disease a senior can be to remain eligible to participate. There are about 60 study sites located around metropolitan areas in the United States.
Nourish Ad clinical research study is testing an investigational treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss. “Investigational” means that this treatment is currently being tested and isn’t approved or available for use by the public. The investigational drug is called AC-1204. It is a double-blind study to improve thinking processes for people with Alzheimer’s disease. If a senior volunteers for this study, they either get the drug AC-1204 or not. Learn more about the company, the drug and eligibility for the trial HERE.
My mother-in-law, Amy, has Alzheimer’s and I hope we can figure out this disease in her lifetime.
I am not a doctor, but my simplified version of this trial is as follows: Seniors’ brains work on glucose. Seniors with Alzheimer’s brains do not process glucose normally. This trial will give a senior with Alzheimer’s a daily drink that provides an alternative energy source for the brain to improve memory.
A total of 480 seniors can qualify for this 6-month study. Senior participants must be 66 to 90 years old with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s or memory loss. The senior must have a permanent caregiver or family member participate in the study as well.
The study is designed to look at the safety and effectiveness of AC-1204. If a senior completes the first part of the study, he or she will have the option to continue AC-1204 for 6 more months at no additional cost.
There may be risks for participating in any clinical trial. Consider the risks and benefits before involving your loved one. Clinical studies are required by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) prior to the release of a drug to the general public. Not all investigational drugs are approved by the FDA.
For managers/administrators of assisted living and memory care communities: If your community resides by one of the metropolitan study sites, a local doctor who is overseeing the research study could put on a presentation for your staff/caregivers or possible participants. Call Laura for more information at: 303.999.3742.
Diane Masson is a senior living expert who has authored two 5-star rated books. “Your Senior Housing Options,” empowers seniors to plan ahead and make their own decisions for the future, instead of waiting for a health care crisis and having family members put them someplace. The second book was written for senior living professionals called, “Senior Housing Marketing – How To Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full.” Reach out to her through her website: Tips2Seniors.com and read the weekly blog.
How do you keep your mom or dad safe in a memory care community or assisted living? A retired cop moved into my mother-in-law’s memory care community and has been demonstrating sexual and violent aggression against her, other residents, and staff. This is what my family is facing now. Read about the incidents in, “Violence in Memory Care,” HERE.
This is a list of whom we have emphatically voiced our concerns:
Caregivers
The nurse
The Administrator
Two ombudsmen
The State of Washington (surveyors of licensed assisted living)
Adult Protective Services
Our family requested a care conference to discuss the safety of my mother-in-law, Amy. Two ombudsmen, the administrator, three adult children and myself attended it. It was the worst care conference that I have ever experienced in my 17 years working as a professional in senior living. On a personal level, I have attended numerous care conferences for nine years as an advocate for my own mother who had dementia. There is always a conclusion at the end of the care conference that provides some sense of hope for improving care or concerns.
Why was this care conference so bad?
The administrator would only talk about Amy. She refused to discuss Amy’s safety in regards to the aggressive cop, because of HIPPA. She refused to share any measures or policies that the staff was following for Amy’s safety. Are you kidding me? I specifically asked, “What are you doing to protect her?” She said that she could not answer that question and kept talking in circles.
The ombudsmen were no help either. They said they could only discuss Amy because we gave them permission to do so. They could not discuss any other residents or the aggressive retired cop because they had not been given permission to do so. Nobody would address the elephant in the room, which was an aggressive retired cop with dementia preying on vulnerable residents.
What about Amy’s safety? What about the other residents’ safety?
The state did a surprise visit to the memory care community last week and said there are no new violations. This community is in a rural part of Washington State. There is not another community in the local area.
Any advice from senior living professionals? What else can we do?
Tip: For adult children looking for memory care or assisted living. Interview the administrator, before you move your parent into the community. Find out how long they have worked there. We did this and the answer was two years. Life was good for Amy until this experienced administrator moved on.
Diane Masson is a senior living expert who has authored two 5-star rated books. Her new book is an all-encompassing answer guide for seniors called, “Your Senior Housing Options,” designed to help seniors navigate choices quickly. The second book was written for senior living professionals called, “Senior Housing Marketing – How To Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full.” Reach out to her through her website: Tips2Seniors.com and read the weekly blog.
Did you share a holiday dinner with a struggling senior? Have the basics become difficult for your senior parent? Is there a little dementia? Learn how to have “The Talk,” with a senior from author Diane Masson.
Happy holidays from Diane Masson and Tips2Seniors.com
