aza9

Volunteer are an activity department biggest asset!! Not sure why we turn them away. I know another AD that had a similar situation. A couple week after the news that should couldn't have volutneers because of the liability, she went back to her administrator with a plan. She created a comprehensive volunteer training program with rules and regualtion, policies and procedures. SHe did creat a youth program, but had parents consent and sign a wavier form basically stating they are volunteers , not getting paid, working at there own risk. It worked and know she has a great program. Just a thought... hope it helps a liitle.

After nine years of working in the hospice field, I have seen first hand the benefits of meditation relexation for pain managment of terminal patients. At our facility we implemented an 11th hour program focused on providing quality activities for dying residents. The program consisits primarly of meditation and relaxation techniques that provide some level of pain relief. Of course a big component of this playing music. It doesn't matter what you play, but it should be something soft with low soft tones, and played at medium volume in resident rooms. Another way to approach this is just talking to the patient as a relexation technique ans sometimes just saying nothing at all, just being in the room is all the relexation people need. Just my experiences, hope it helps.

I am a firm advocate of pet therapy. We have no pets, but do have a huge fish tank. The fish tank is great, the reisdents feed them daily and keep track of how many new baby fish. However the fish tank was a happy medium, the nursing staff wanted a rabbit, the residents wanted a cat and somehow we came out of the deal with fish . The converstaion has came back up about getting a cat and having dogs visit more routinely. Currenlty we have a "Pet Afternoon" once every other month, our adminstrator have us to everything in our courtyard area, during the summer months. We have food and make an afternoon party of it. By makeing a party of it the staff tends to get more involved and help more too. It works good, but there is much room for improvement. Not sure if that helps any, but its an idea

I agree group activites in swing bed setting are very difficult to pull off and are ( at least at my place) are a logistic nightmare. Therefore the last couple months we have been doing monthly theme parties and inviting patient families to attend. It kinda acts like a night out and everyone enjoys it. Of course, we are on a major budget, so I typically get all the decorations and door prizes donated from the local thrift stores. To supplement this we also encourage the patients to attend our long ter care activites(we also have a 60 bed long term care and rehab unit). Hope this helps, it has also been for public relations in the community.

I have worked in swing bed for the last ten months. We had the same issues after some remodeling was done. After doing alot of research both online and onsite, we came to the conclusion that decor should be primarly influenced on what the patients are use too. Meaning our very rural location and our socioeconomic situation be the driving factors in picking the paint and the overall decor. So... we did very simple decorations with painting that refelct our rural area and are reminisce of our state(great state of WV). This has really worked out good for us. Families feel comfortable in the activity area and patients feel more at home. Feeling at home was a big deal and played a huge impact in choosing the decor, seeing as some(most) patients this is truly there home.

Hello, I understand your frustation. When I started 10 months ago, the activity director position had been open for 5 months. Therefore the whole situation with other staff was at an all time high. My theroy was to kill them with kindness.....therefore I had the residents make them goodie bags with candy and goodies, we did this for holiday and special career months. Hope this helps a little bit, but it seems like it is ongoing situation. We have started doing the 15 minute before activites personally inviting residents to come and this has really, really, helped. The residents really like the personal face to face invitation.