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A Day to Celebrate Older Americans

Today, we honor our elderly and celebrate Senior Citizens Day in the United States. As our population increasingly ages, it is imperative that we recognize the importance of supporting senior citizens in our communities.

More than 40 million senior citizens live in the US, and that number will only grow as people live longer than ever before. Every Aug. 21 is a day to acknowledge the contributions and dedications of older people, and take the time to ensure we give something back. Ronald Reagan created Senior Citizens Day in 1988. Every year senior and community centers celebrate with special events. In addition, businesses, such as Arby’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Subway, often offer discounts for senior citizens.

The best way to celebrate today is likely the easiest: call up an elderly person you know and lend an ear. However, many people also choose to volunteer at nursing homes or the VFW.

If you missed this year’s Senior Citizens Day, don’t worry: you have another chance to honor the elderly on Oct. 1, the International Day of Older Persons. This global observance not only raises awareness of the achievements of older people, but also of such topics as:

• Aging populations and the provisions of adequate healthcare for the elderly
• Volunteer work
• Social care
• Ways to be more inclusive of older persons in the workforce

Visiting the Elderly – A Habit That Can Keep Them Young

Daughter with father — Spending time with your elderly loved ones keeps them busy and healthier

Your grandmother is in a nursing home with whom you used to stay all the time with when she was home; we often feel sympathetic towards our elders who are living in a nursing home, but that is the only thing we do for them. How come we never consider visiting them?

Most of us have a perception of nursing homes being a depressing place or that visiting our elders is not just cool enough. We are hugely mistaken on both accounts. First-off, the nursing homes of today not only provide the most excellent care to their elders, but also have many activities and other things planned that keep the elders occupied. Moreover, senior citizens get to meet people like them and of their own age. The only thing lacking from their life is a visit from their loved ones.

There are many good reasons for you to visit your beloved elder. Here are some of them:

Keeping A Check On Their Health:

They are your own flesh and blood and it is your responsibility to keep a check on their health. Visiting them once a week is good and visiting them every other day is even better. You’d know how they are doing, how they are being taken care of and would result in you being kept in the loop about their well-being. The elder person too feels secure and safe in the knowledge that someone is looking after them.

Mending Severed Ties:

There is always someone in the family who we never liked much or we never had a good relation with. However, that doesn’t mean that we put them out of our lives forever. It’s a harsh reality but at any point of time, those elders could be taking their last breaths. You don’t want them to die without saying sorry to them or without actually getting on good terms with them. Visiting elders you never liked will not only be good for your conscience, but will also give you a sense of closure. You will be surprised to know how many people actually become good friends only after reaching a very old age. So, don’t put your non-favorite people off your visiting list.

Helping them Feel Loved:

Blood relations can never be replaced by anyone or anything else in life and that is why most elders become very lonely, despite being surrounded by many others. Visits from you can change their life. They begin to show positive behavior, smile more and they wait for your visits every day. Most elders who are left by their family get very quiet and their health deteriorates quicker than the others. Visiting family and friends keep them young, healthy and happy. So, even when their time is up, they leave the world with a smile on their face. Imagine you being the reason for that smile!

If you have any elder in a nursing home right now, then make it a point to visit them as regularly as possible. They don’t need much and just your presence is enough to add life to their numbered days.

How Nurses Can Relieve Stress for Better Productivity

Nursing can be a stressful profession. Every day, nurses deal with a tremendous amount of pressure that can ultimately have an effect on their own health. The most anxiety prone services are associated with the ED, OR and ICU departments. However, those who don’t belong to these sections are under no less pressure, as they deal with traumatic injuries and terminal illnesses that don’t always have a favorable and positive outcome in the end.

Nurses see heart-crushing deaths and attendants that have deep lines of sorrow and grief etched onto their faces. Remaining aloof from these emotions is impossible, but dealing with these emotions day after day can take its toll. The best way to continue being a wonderful and compassionate medical professional while maintaining your sanity is to indulge in stress-relieving hobbies and activities.

If nurses want to relieve stress, these activities can be used for enjoyment and relaxation. You can choose any of the following, depending on your preferences and personal likes and dislikes.

Relaxation Classes

Just because you are a nurse doesn’t mean that you cannot indulge in relaxation classes. In the summer, several sources and community centers offer classes that can help with relaxation. You can either choose yoga, Tai Chi, crocheting, quilt making, woodworking or pottery making. If you live near a large city, you will have hundreds of choices to choose from. It will not only allow you to relieve stress, but will also you to learn something new, which will engage your concentration and your urge for constant movement and the desire to keep busy.

Interesting Hobbies

If you already have a hobby, it is time that you pursue it. Whether you enjoy gardening, hiking, rock climbing, swimming, fishing, cooking, baking or camping, you can spend time doing something that you really love. If you don’t like going outside and want to stay indoors, read a book, watch some Netflix or a great movie, start making jewelry or start an aquarium. You can also learn to play a musical instrument from numerous YouTube tutorials. Remember, music can be very soothing to the senses after a stressful day at work.

Meditation

Meditating is the perfect way to relieve stress and to achieve self-actualization. Becoming one with your mind and body will not only help you relieve your mind but also your muscles and joints. If you don’t know how to meditate, there are several online videos, CDs, and books that teach you how to do it properly. Meditation will not only help you feel better and relaxed but it will also reduce anxiety and lower your blood pressure.

Exercise and Keep In Shape

Obesity is a hardship on its own and when you combine it with a demanding job of nursing, it can become quite stressful to function without breaking down in the middle of the day. Exercising can help you relieve stress. Physical activities like Zumba, cycling, jogging, yoga and swimming can help you get out in the sun and get some much-needed Vitamin D and fresh air.

Moving to a Nursing Home – How to Deal with Emotions

Saying goodbyes is always a very difficult task. Now that it is time for your father, grandparent or any old member of your family to move to a nursing home, it may be a very stressful process. Regardless of the reason behind them moving to a nursing home, moving brings a number of different emotions along with some unforgettable memories and tears. One does not leave a place; instead, they leave behind some familiar and loving memories.

Moving to some other place is not easy. So, here’s a small guide to help you deal with the stressful emotions.

How to Ease the Transition?

Change cannot be accepted easily as after all, it is not easy to move on and accept things the way they are. But if you want to ease the transition, check out the elements below.

Take Time

If you are the one who has sent the elder member of the family to the nursing home or are yourself being moved to a nursing home, then it is for both. When the person sends someone to a nursing home, they may feel guilty about it as they might think that they were not able to care or look after them. They could also feel sad that their loved one has to go through the transition and difficulties. Also, the old person who is sent to the nursing home may not feel like they are at home and may not like the environment.

In both of these situations, both of you need to stay calm and patient, even though it not very easy to do so. In short, you need to take time. Only time can heal the emotions, change and transition. All you need to work hard on is to sweep aside the anger and grief under the rug. You anger and guilt will only intensify the feelings; hence, it is better to give time to things and yourself.

Make the Elder Person Decide

To ease the transition, you should let the older adult decide the nursing home. While there might be several options available, you should let them choose which nursing home to opt for and which one is best for them. Make them visit the nursing homes and leave the choice to them. If the older person is unable to do so, the members of the family should make a collective decision and make the process easier for them.

Stay in Touch

Staying in touch and in contact is of paramount importance. If you keep in touch with the person, it will make them feel like they are at home. You can call them, send them emails and letters to make them feel special. To help them ease through this transition, you can make visits with other family members and their friends as well. This is a good idea for change. Keep them in the loop about everything, be it a small or a big matter. Keep them informed about everything so that they do not feel left out of the family events and feel involved instead.

Change is not easy but we hope that with this guide, you will be able to deal with the transition and stressful emotions much more easily.

Palliative Care Consults in Nursing Homes Reduce Hospitalizations

Palliative Care for Seniors — Palliative Care can help seniors who would otherwise be depressed

Palliative care consults in nursing homes lead to fewer hospitalizations and less intensive treatment.

A study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society studied nursing home residents who died from 2006 to 2010 and found that hospitalization rates were the lowest when the initial palliative care consultation happened the furthest from death.

“These findings have never been shown in nursing homes,” author Susan Miller, PhD, MBA, a Brown University gerontologist and School of Public Health professor, said in a statement. “It’s important that we document this because essentially when people are in the nursing home for a long stay, that’s their final residence. These are people in need of supportive care and expertise in palliative care.”

The study found that for residents with initial consultations 8 to 30 days before death had a hospitalization rate in the last 7 days of life of 11.1% compared with a rate of 6.9% for patients with initial consultations 61 to 180 days before death.

Dr. Miller wasn’t surprised at the differences, but was surprised at how large the differences were.

Potentially burdensome transition rates were about 50% lower for residents with consults at 61 to 180 days before death compared with residents without consults. Transitions between settings can be physically and emotionally stressful for elderly, frail patients, and there is the risk of new medication side effects, exposure to resistant bacteria, and complications from procedures.

Palliative care consults are not used more frequently because unlike hospice care, palliative care consults are not a distinct benefit under Medicare. The payment for providers is usually not much.

Hospice care is used when the patient is likely to die within 6 months and many elderly people in nursing homes have serious illnesses that aren’t necessarily terminal. As a result, the hospice benefit may not be an option, but consults to access palliative care could benefit them.

“There are a lot of things that we need to consider,” Dr. Miller said. “If we had payment for this and there were more people providing it there would be greater access and maybe different people using it.”

Visiting the Elderly – A Habit That Can Keep Them Young

Your beloved aunt is in a nursing home or your grandmother with whom you used to stay all the time or even the grandpa whom you visit; we often feel sympathetic towards our elders who are living in a nursing home but that is the only thing we do for them; thinking of them occasionally. How come we never consider visiting them?

Most of us have a perception of nursing homes being a depressing place or that visiting our elders is not just cool enough. We are hugely mistaken on both accounts. First-off, the nursing homes of today not only provide the most excellent care to their elders, but also have many activities and other things planned that keep the elders occupied. Moreover, the elders get to meet people like them and of their own age. The only thing lacking from their life is a visit from their loved ones.

There are many good reasons for you to visit your beloved elder. Here are some of them:

Keeping A Check On Their Health

Mending Severed Ties

Helping them Feel Loved

Five Signs Which Tell Us It’s Time for Assisted Living

Leaving your loved ones to be taken care of by strangers is certainly a difficult decision to make. It is a bizarre thing for both, the elderly person and the family members. Yet, it is a decision that has to be made. Nurses and doctors in assisted living institutions are educated and caring people. They take care of the elderly on their own and help them stay safe and healthy.

It is difficult to determine the right time to move the elderly. However, time is of the essence when the health of a person is in question. You never know when the elderly might need immediate medical attention and by the time they get it, it is already too late. Let’s learn about some signs that tell us loud and clear that it’s time for assisted living;

Meandering off:

Dementia is one of the most common conditions that emerge in old age. Most elderly people are found meandering from their rooms or wandering off in the corridors. A time comes when this wondering gets to be too much and increases the risk of falling, hurting and accidents occurring.

Medications:

Regular and timely intake of medications is another necessary part of old age. Medicines are all that keep some elderly on their feet. Yet, a time comes when an old person is not taking medications on time or going days without proper eating. When this begins to happen, know that they need assistance.

Decline in Cognitive Behavior:

A time comes in old age when we begin to forget about directions, fail to make any sound decision or even complete a sentence. These are telling signs that a senior is in need of assisted living.

Injuries:

As people grow old, they begin to lose energy in their bones, their sense of balance becomes off and as a result, they become a victim of frequent injuries. It is unsafe for an elderly to live like this alone, without having anyone to look after them.

Driving:

When you begin to see lots of traffic tickets around the house, dents in the car or people complaining about the driving habits of an elderly person, it means that they are unable to get around on their own. This not only poses a threat to the seniors but to the life of others in the area as well.

As soon as you notice any of the above-mentioned signs in your old parents, grandparents or neighbors, provide them with assisted living, pronto.

Nursing Home Information Being Added To Yelp

Consumers will now be able to look up government information on healthcare facilities thanks to the data ProPublica has compiled data on 15,000 nursing homes, 4,600 hospitals, and 6,300 dialysis clinics using information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to Washington Post.

Pages for nursing homes contain information about fines paid to the government and whether inspections have shown “serious deficiencies” in the last 3 years. The data is color-coded for ease of use.

“Now the millions of consumers who use Yelp to find and evaluate everything from restaurants to retail will have even more information at their fingertips when they are in the midst of the most critical life decisions, like which hospital to choose for a sick child or which nursing home will provide the best care for aging parents,” Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelmen wrote in a blog post.

Healthcare and medical businesses have already been available on Yelp for consumers to review using the star-rating system, but now the additional information from ProPublica will appear on the page as well. According to Yelp, the health category makes up 6% of reviewed businesses.

Most of the information being made available on Yelp is already available on Medicare’s Hospital Compare site, which can be difficult to sift through.

“While it is helpful, having general information doesn’t really add as much value as doctor-specific feedback that pretty much every hospital in the country is capturing,” Mr. Stoppelmen wrote. “Healthcare is very personal — often it is about a one-on-one relationship, so the information that consumers crave the most is information about a particular doctor.”

Senior Citizens are Living Longer, Better Lives

Happy Senior Citizens — Will the health care industry be able to keep up with the growing elder population?

According to a study from researchers at Harvard University, people are living longer due to major advancements in medical technology. In view of this, the aging population has been a source of great concern for the already-overworked healthcare industry. A study from the Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress found that hospitals in New York’s Hudson Valley region are not prepared to meet the demands of the aging population; however, a number of nursing homes are preparing for the additional patients that will be coming.

What the Study on Senior Care Suggested

Under lead advisor Daniel Z. Aronzon, MD, former chief executive officer of Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, the organization compiled a 92-page report entitled “Aging in the Hudson Valley: Is the Healthcare System Ready?”

According to the report, the region should prepare for a greater need for providers to handle the capacity and better facilitated end-of-life care, among other changes that will be necessary to continue providing quality care for the region’s population.

“Models of increased consolidation and integration in other parts of the country, which result in better outcomes and lower costs, provide valuable lessons in the Hudson Valley’s pursuit of better healthcare,” the authors wrote.

Costs of Upstate Health Care for Senior Citizens

The report also pointed out that the median daily cost for skilled nursing facilities in Hudson Valley could be as high as $405 for Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester counties.

Based on data from the New York State Department of Health’s Resident Health Care Facility Bed Need – 2016 report, Hudson Valley will have to increase beds in skilled nursing facilities by 93.10% in order to meet the growing needs.

Obama Considers New Best Practices for Nursing Homes

The federal government is considering a new rule that would improve the care and safety of the 1.5 million patients living in more than 15,000 long-term care facilities or nursing homes in the US.

The current requirements for Medicare and Medicaid participation have not been reviewed or updated since 1991. Since that time there has been extensive evidence-based research that has enhanced knowledge of resident safety and health outcomes.

“In light of these changes, we recognized the need to evaluate the regulations on a comprehensive basis, from both a structural and a content perspective,” according to the rule.

A proposed rule being considered by the Department of Health and Human Services would create best practices for nursing homes that participate in Medicare and Medicaid programs. The rule would require staff be properly trained on caring for patients with dementia and preventing elder abuse.

The rule also would require facilities improve their care planning and provide more food choices. Nursing homes would also be required to update infection prevention and control programs.

“These proposed changes are necessary to reflect the substantial advances that have been made over the past several years in the theory and practice of service delivery and safety,” HHS wrote in the rule. “These proposals are also an integral part of our efforts to achieve broad-based improvements both in the quality of health care furnished through federal programs, and in patient safety, while at the same time reducing procedural burdens on providers.”

President Barack Obama initiated the call for improved regulations at 2015 White Conference on Aging. The president is working to bring nursing facilities towards utilizing the current trends in medical technology.

In an excerpt from the deliverable, “The 2015 White House Conference on Aging is harnessing technology to bring today’s conversation to communities across the country. Hundreds of watch parties are happening across every state in America and are being hosted by organizations such as AARP, the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Diverse Elders Coalition, Leadership Council of Aging Organizations members, and numerous cities and counties.”

Many nursing homes are already on this course, but the new regulations will ensure that these rules are followed across the board.