Category: Archive: Apr 2020

Nursing Homes Need Support, Not Blame

By Jill Vitale-Aussem, LNHA, MMH, author of Disrupting the Status Quo of Senior Living: A Mindshift This post was originally shared on www.jillvitaleaussem.com and has been re-posted here with permission. View the original post here. I had hoped, with the current focus on healthcare workers as heroes, that the demonizing of nursing homes would cease during the pandemic. It hasn’t. I’ve seen very few news stories blaming hospitals when patients die from COVID-19 but nearly every story about people dying in a nursing home outbreak somehow blames the nursing home. While there are always some bad apples,…

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Dementia Care at a Distance

The COVID-19 crisis is taking a heavy toll on all of us, particularly family and professional care partners. Visitors are prohibited in most residential care communities; this is necessary but certainly can be distressing to families and persons with dementia. Even when we are together, we are told to stay six feet apart. The very phrase “social distancing” is the opposite of the Best Friends™ Approach and what we want in quality dementia care. In many ways, socialization is the treatment for dementia. Social distancing (and lots of handwashing) is necessary to ensure good public health practices, but can we…

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