Another article about changing nursing homes. These are getting to be pretty common items that pop up in a Google News search for nursing homes.

LONGVIEW – The more nursing homes John Fite visited, the more he became convinced that he wasn’t going to put his sister in one.

Residents of Grace Presbyterian Village in Dallas do water aerobics. Realizing that institutional atmospheres are aunappealing, nursing homes are redesigning their buildings, retraining staff and letting residents determine their own activities and schedules.

“All I saw were people slumped in their wheelchairs,” the Longview dentist said. “And the odor was just as jarring.”

Then he heard about the extreme makeover at Buckner Retirement Services Inc.’s Longview campus.

There are similar themes that are being presented when it comes to culture change:

The first is to make nursing homes’ physical setting less institutional.

“Now is an opportune time to rethink nursing homes,” said Larry Minnix, president and chief executive of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, a trade group for nonprofit care providers.

Many of the nation’s 17,000 nursing homes date from the 1960s and ’70s and are due for replacement or extensive remodeling, he said.

As owners renovate, they’re breaking larger buildings into smaller living units, called “neighborhoods,” each with its own common space.

And:

Like other operators, P&M Health Care has introduced restaurant-style dining in the 37 for-profit nursing homes it manages in Texas. Plastic trays have given way to china, linen napkins, fresh flowers and menus.

“It’s all about giving residents more choices,” said Kenny Owings, regional vice president for the Pennsylvania company.

Other nursing homes have added bread machines, pets, spas and vegetable gardens to make themselves homier. They’ve restyled nurses stations to look like home desks and ripped out public address systems.

Very importantly:

A second objective of culture change is to create a more stable workforce.

The nursing home industry has been beset with turnover rates averaging 70 percent a year. Experts say any nursing home with a constantly changing staff can’t know its residents well.

The answer lies in better pay, better training and better work environments for caregivers, said Robyn Stone, executive director of the Institute for the Future of Aging Services.

One workforce strategy is to assign caregivers to the same residents each day instead of rotating staff members between wings or floors.

“It’s a win-win for residents and staff,” said Gloria Bean, director of nursing home improvement for the TMF Health Quality Institute in Austin.

“The same caregivers can spot subtle changes in residents’ behavior and head off problems. Plus they have the satisfaction of seeing the difference they’re making in seniors’ lives,” she said.

The most important:

The third common characteristic of culture change is to give nursing home residents more control over their lives.

Consumer advocates and others question how far and how deep the culture change movement will go.

“We’re still in the early stages,” said Rose Marie Fagan, co-founder of a culture change group called the Pioneer Network. “It’s easy to do the window-dressing stuff, like put a bird in the lobby. It’s much harder to change routines.”

Nursing homes must throw out their schedules and let residents decide for themselves when to wake up, bathe, eat meals, socialize and go to bed, she said.

It’s all about changing how we view our elderly…how we respect them and value them. One of the biggest problems with culture change is staff attitude. From the top all the way down, we hear about this window dressing stuff and how it really doesn’t change a thing. Management still wants to be in charge- they don’t and won’t allow the lowly CNA to make decisions about resident care and safety issues. Nurses, charge and others, don’t like the idea of being located out of these neighborhoods- in these places nurses stations are no where in sight (usually in one building or section of the main building)…I have found, over and over again that it is the leaders who resist these changes more then the hands on staff and residents. Someday we all hope to see this truly change; and the funding needed must continue. Government oversight must make allowances for modern day change as well.