Touring the Nursing Home Facility

This home for our residents was remodeled about two years ago. Our home has two types of residents—those that are here for a short time for rehabilitation and those that live here—it is their home. As we walk through, you will see that the part of the building that is for those that live here reflects a home environment.

Our residents have their individual routines and we really focus on honoring their preferences. The three meals of the day are available for two hour increments and residents can always have access to food between meal servings. For each meal, residents can choose their food from a menu with many choices.

Residents bring their own belongings such as some of their furniture and treasured items to the home when they move in.

As you can see, our staff have genuine, caring relationships with our residents. Staff work in the same area of the nursing home so they can develop and maintain relationships with the residents. By having the same nursing staff with them on a regular and ongoing basis, residents don’t have to worry about having their routines adjusted. The staff really knows our residents—when they like to get up in the morning; information about their families; their favorite foods; their moods and so on.

We strongly believe in supporting our residents to have ongoing contact with their families. Many of our residents have spouses that come here daily to be with their loved one. All our families are invited and encouraged to come to care planning meetings; and of course, they are always able to share information and concerns at any time.

I would like you to meet some of the nursing staff. They are all eager to have nursing students learn at Maple Village.

RN Coordinator: Hi, I am the RN coordinator for one of the living areas for our residents. I have both a management and a clinical role. I make daily visits to each of the residents and conduct a focused assessment depending on the clinical needs of each resident. In addition to being a gerontological nurse expert, I serve as a care role model, care team leader, and teacher/mentor. I welcome having students spend time with me.

Nursing Assistant: I am one of the nursing assistants for this living area. I have the privilege of helping the residents with any and all of their needs. We truly believe that residents should be able to determine their daily routines and my role is to help them with that. I provide support and care to the same group of residents whenever I am scheduled to work, so I know them very well and we have a strong relationship. I would really like to introduce the students to my residents. I can also share with them many of the things that I know about them and their preferences.

LPN: As the LPN in the residents’ living area, I make sure they receive their medical treatments and medications. Your students might be surprised to know that we do not have medication carts that are used to store and administer medications. Rather, the medications are kept in the residents’ rooms. I would really enjoy showing students how we are able to support the philosophy of person directed care through our medication administration strategies. If any of the students want experience with medical treatments such as dressing changes, pressure ulcer care and prevention, using bladder scanners and the like, I would be happy to make sure they have those learning opportunities.

Staff Development Director: As the staff development director, my main role is to ensure that our nursing staff has the knowledge and skills to provide person-directed clinical care for our residents. I have responsibilities for new staff orientation, providing required education activities such as fire and safety, and developing, implementing and evaluating a comprehensive staff development program for all our nursing staff. I would welcome partnering with you and your students to develop a joint education program for our staff and your students.

Nurse Assessment Coordinator: I really enjoy my position as the nurse assessment coordinator. I work in close collaboration with all the interdisciplinary staff and nursing staff to ensure that we have comprehensive information about our residents. We document much of that information on the MDS assessment, which then helps us develop an individualized, and person directed plan of care for each resident. I hope that each of your students could spend some time with me. I know that I could provide them with opportunities to do some parts of the MDS assessment, and participate in a care-planning meeting with our interdisciplinary staff, nursing staff, residents, and families.

We are committed to providing evidence-based nursing care and are always searching for best practices to provide quality care for our residents. We are required to use a federally mandated assessment instrument, the Minimum Data Set (MDS). Associated with the MDS are the Care Assessment Areas—we refer to them as CAAs. The CAAs are evidence-based protocols to guide further assessment beyond the MDS that assist in determining risk, contributing causes, and care planning. Care assessment areas include things such as delirium, urinary incontinence, and pressure ulcers—there are 19 of them. Also, we use other resources such as clinical guidelines from the American Medical Directors Association and we us the resources on the website — ConsultGeriRN.org