By Tiffany Bishop, Therapy Resource, Keystone North, TX
For those of us in the therapy world, we all know the value that the Abilities Care Approach can bring to our residents in the form of increased independence, decreased behaviors, and increased ability to function in the environment. Just this past week, our most recent Therapy Experts in the Abilities Care Holistic Approach (TEACHA) team had a brief check-in call. One of the items we identified as a potential for growth is partnering better with our clinical partners to integrate our ACA programming throughout residents’ whole intervention plan.
In a time when our partners are already stretched thin, we identified the need for making any recommendations for our clinical teams more manageable to follow. There were several suggestions that were shared, and Elyse Matson is leading the charge to collect any more that have been effective and putting those ideas in an easy-t- distribute format. Below are some of the tips and tricks that were identified during our call.
● Make sure that we are working around their schedules when training
● Include these caregivers in the process of developing and implementing any adaptive strategies/tools so they can provide input along the way and have ownership in the intervention
● Empower our frontline partners as caregivers to be able to follow through with the day-to-day implementation of any interventions
● Be specific
● Be frugal in our expectations
● Be strategic in when/how we train; consider utilizing Skills Fairs to train common interventions
● Identify and stress how any intervention can be a win for them; how will it decrease their daily burden?
Stay tuned for more details to come from the Long Term Care Think Tank, and if you have any ideas that have worked well in your facility, please reach out to Elyse Matson.