Forum Paves Way For Culture Change
Nursing home administrators, certified nursing assistants, residents, families, union representatives, and government officials met in November at FRIA's Informational Forum on Nursing Home Culture Change to discuss some proven ways to change the institutional culture of today’s nursing homes.
"Culture change is about "normalizing" a nursing home" according to Catherine Unsino, a guest speaker at the conference. "It’s moving away from stereotyping people by their illness. Culture change is about treating all people in the nursing home community- staff, residents, families-like humans."
The conference’s main speakers were two "pioneers" of nursing home culture change, Barry and Debra Barkan, from the Live Oak Institute in California. Like other administrators who have become interested in culture change, the Barkans realized that the standard nursing home environment wasn’t really a home for its residents. They saw a rigid, sterile system that provided medical care but didn’t focus on quality of life for residents or staff.
The Barkans introduced the "community meeting" - a daily gathering of staff, residents, and some family members to talk, sing, exercise, and discuss the news of the nursing home and its neighborhood. The Barkans also developed more flexible procedures to allow residents to decide for themselves when to bathe or go to sleep, instead of having to rely on an institutional schedule.
Additional approaches to nursing home culture change developed by the other "pioneer" administrators were mentioned at the conference, including: on-site children’s day care centers to reduce a nursing home’s isolation from the surrounding community, home-like facilities filled with plants and animals, and small self-controlled units in a facility where unit staff, residents, and families make decisions that affect them, including how its budget should be spent.
Conference participants, who represented many co-sponsoring groups, all recognized the benefits that culture change can bring. Future sessions will bring additional pioneers and their approaches to New York.