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Enhancing the Lives of Nursing Home Residents One Volunteer at a Time

Diane

Another Excellent Educational Resource

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Your response to last month’s post about MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) went far beyond my expectations! Obviously, my readers are very interested in educational opportunities. So this month I decided to share another of my favorite resources to help us keep up with healthcare information.

Have you heard about Khan Academy? The mission of Khan Academy is to “provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere”. Similar to most MOOCs, their courses are available free of charge. Unlike MOOCs, all of the Khan Academy classes are ongoing, so you can sign up whenever you wish and complete them at your own pace.

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Let’s Bring Back May Day!

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May Day activities

Ask some of your younger employees to tell you about May Day, and they probably won’t know what you’re talking about. Yet, I’ll bet many of your residents can share lots of fun stories about May Day traditions from long ago.

There’s a special day to celebrate almost everything nowadays, but May Day seems to have been lost along the way in many parts of our country. That’s sad because traditionally it’s a beautiful celebration of the coming of spring. I hope when you fill out your activity calendars you’ll include May Day on May 1 this year.

I know your residents will enjoy these special activities. What else do you do to celebrate May Day? Please add your ideas in the comment section!

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Promoting Dignity In The Nursing Home

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nursing home dignity

When I worked as a nurse manager in a nursing home, one of my responsibilities was to plan quarterly in-services for staff who worked on our memory care unit. I didn’t want these mandatory classes to be tedious events that employees dreaded sitting through at the end of a long shift. Obviously, the presentations needed to be helpful and enjoyable.

Knowing that staff would grow tired of listening to me teach all of these in-services, I occasionally looked for videos to share. But it was tough to find high-quality products back in those days.

Recently I came upon this YouTube video, and I wish I had found it years ago. I think this is a perfect resource to help people understand what it feels like to live in a nursing home.

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7 Tips To Recruit People For Charity Walks

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recruiting people for charity walks

I’m thrilled that summer is finally just around the corner! This means excitement is building for several walks and runs coming up in our area to raise money for charities. So I decided this is a good time to re-post a popular article from last year. I’ve also added a few extra tips I picked up along the way.

Besides raising money for our own nursing home, we feel it’s important to support other organizations that help our residents. Over the years, we’ve taken part in walks and runs to raise money for a variety of causes. This includes helping people living with diabetes, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Taking part in fundraisers for charities benefits your nursing home in several ways:

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Have You Heard Of Namaste Care?

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Namaste care in nursing homes

Many of you know that I’m taking an online course called “Understanding Dementia” through the University of Tasmania. This week’s module talks about various models of care that help us enhance our residents’ quality of life.

I’m familiar with all the programs they describe except for one. Have you ever heard of Namaste Care?

These are the words of Joyce Simard, the founder of this unique approach to dementia care:

“The Namaste Care™ program is an extension of my efforts to educate family and professional care partners so that they can help people LIVE – not just exist – with irreversible dementia like Alzheimer’s disease. I do not think that keeping a person clean, fed, and groomed is living; this is merely existing. People need to be engaged in meaningful activities, they need to feel wanted, loved, need to feel as if they still can contribute.”

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