Have you recently attended your facility's care planning meetings? Is the meeting run by a licensed nurse who is focused primarily on medical issues such as skin breakdown and continence? Is facility staff adhering to a strict schedule that does not allow adequate time for resident and family discussion? Are you including primary care staff (C.N.A's/ PSS) in the meetings? Do residents and their family members attend? Have you thought about how you could begin to implement a resident directed / centered care approach to care planning at your facility?
Maybe it is time to consider an overhaul of your facility's care / service planning process!
Typically, the care planning process ties into the MDS process – the source of all payment and quality indicator based information for a facility. But care planning is a process that must involve listening to the resident and their caregivers. In the social model of care facility staff do not focus solely on the medical needs, they focus on the holistic needs of the resident, the spirit, mind and body. Social model care plans include and embrace the information provided by the resident, the family and any primary caregivers. One method of developing care plans that really meet resident needs is called "I Care Plans", which are prepared in the voice of the resident and are written for the lay person to read.
At least one Maine NF/SNF facility, the C.A. Dean Nursing Facility in Greenville, recently received a "deficiency -free" survey, partly due to the fact that the surveyors were very impressed with their "I Care Plans". Tracey Bonney-Corson, Director of Nursing at C. A. Dean, states that the "I Care Plan" has been a challenging yet very positive process for her facility. The "I Care Plan" creates a living document, which truly addresses the person in all their personhood rather than identifying problems and remedies in institutional language. Tracey says that she has created templates that correspond to the Hi-Tech care planning system and this has simplified the process a great deal. Tracey would be happy to share information on how her facility has implemented the "I Care Plans" and you can contact her by calling 695-5238.
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