Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Holistic Quality of Life Assessment-How?

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Geriatric care managers and aging professionals who want to advance the holistic quality of life for their clients can make a measurable, long lasting impact on overall health and well being if they zero in on quality of life. An articled in the The Advanced Journal of Nursing found that choice, privacy and a sense of identity made all the difference in the quality of life of residents living in residential care. This showed, according to lead author ” the importance of providing a holistic, person-centered approach that goes beyond satisfying the technical and procedural aspects of care” Finding activities that help elders grow and nurture their emotional, intellectual, physical, and/or spiritual quality of life can help to nurture an older persons whole life and bring back joy. For example, look at this you tube on an older woman who reconnected with art, which is her talent and spirituality and younger people plus her family, through a quality of life assessment.

End of Life-When Do You Need Mediation?

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Why do some families need mediation at the end of life? Mediation is a voluntary process in which the parties, with the help of an impartial third party mediator, work together to resolve their differences or solve a problem they were unable to address satisfactorily without help. These family differences especially happen to dysfunctional families but can beset any family at the end of life. They are faced with overwhelming emotions and decisions that demand that the family work together as a team. What happens to dysfunctional and even nearly normal families during this trying time? They don’t gather as a team. They fight. They fret and they feud. What are the results of this fighting, fretting and feuding in families at the end of life?

Unresolved family conflicts emerge

Dysfunctional families become more dysfunctional

Family members’ grief, pain and anxiety are often masked as anger and presents as conflict (past and present)

Older person dies without resolving important family issues

Older person dies in conflict, not in peace

I will speaking this Friday April 19, 2013, at National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers on “The GCM as the Accidental Mediator: Fretting and Fighting or Feuding: Intergenerational Conflict in the Adult Family at End of Life”, in Philadelphia, Penna.

If you are attending the conference, I will look forward to meeting you.

 

 

Professionals Mediating Fighting and Feuding at the End of Life-

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May is National Geriatric Care Manager’s Month I will be speaking at the 29th annual Conference of the National Association of Professional Care Manager’s in Philadelphia on Friday April 19th. I will cover the thorny topic, The GCM as the Accidental Mediator: Fretting and Fighting or Feuding: Intergenerational Conflict in the Adult Family at End of Life. If you are interested in attending and learning more you can still register and attend the conference. . If you are considering this growing profession, I wrote the textbook Handbook of Geriatric Care Management,that is now out in it’s 3rd edition. If you think of opening a GCM agency, I just published the first manual on how to operate a geriatric care management agency My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual. 

Are You A Long Distance Care Provider?

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May is National Geriatric Care Manager Month. If you are a long distance care provider, hiring a geriatric care manager is a great support system. Before your next visit to your long distance family member, call a geriatric care manager in their area.

 

Make an appointment to go to their office and meet with them. Most GCM’s will see you to discuss their services at no charge. You can shop around and interview a few if you wish. Geriatric care managers can be located on the GCM web site . Use your long distance family’s parent’s zip code.
It’s a preventative and prudent idea to have a geriatric care manager in the town where your older relative resides. If there is a crisis, it is cheaper to have them solve it. In an urgent situation, they can go to the hospital or emergency room. This is more sane and cost effective than you getting on last minute, expensive flights. You can still go but they can immediately be there to deal with the crisis. They are good insurance.

 

Before any crisis, you can have the GCM do an initial assessment and visit your older relative periodically (once a month, once every two months). This is preventative. That way they are there for you when you need them and have all the information to solve the problem. Think of them the way you do one of those blow-up beds. You can pump them up when you need them in a crisis—perhaps avoid that crisis, and you yourself can sleep more soundly and with more peace of mind in your own bed. Some of the things a geriatric care manager can do for you are:

1.Save you money by helping keep your parent out of the hospital and you off emergency long distance flights.

2.Facilitate a family meeting of needs, resources, and division of labor among friends family

3. Recommend ways to proactively prepare and plan for a parent’s possible health care crisis.

4.Work on family cooperation to formulate realistic parent-care plan.

5.Assess strengths and weaknesses of all of the potential caregivers

6. Help adult siblings resolve conflicts about care decisions.

7.Help adult  siblings act together in the best interest of the parent

8.Decrease the tension between hometown and long distance siblings

9. Help the long-distance care provider deal with guilt and frustration that may result from their inability to provide more of the day-to-day care.

10.Locate aging resources (both no -cost trough the older Americans Act) in your aging parents area quickly and without you having to do it

Build Emotional Quality of Life Through Technology?

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If you are a geriatric care manager or aging professional wishing to enhance an older person’s emotional quality of life, one of the focal point is getting rid of social isolation. This can include engaging with family and friends, or connecting with programs that enhance inter-generational relationships. Elders can be great storytellers or family historians to grandchildren and  grandparents can certainly read those childhood books grandchildren and great grandchildren- helping parents who work or are very busy.

Grown grandchildren can Skype with grandparents, write card and letters, visit occasionally. They can even set up the Skype or face time  programs for grandparent’s social opportunities. If the family lives locally, it could be as simple as a grandchild working to arrange a regular schedule for visits for other grandchildren or using Google calendar or a  great family caregiving calendaring program like Lots of helping Hands . This allows grandchildren who are always super tech savvy to coordinate social interaction with grandparents. You can even do old school and just coordinate call and visits on a paper. Calendar visits or have grandchildren and adult children sign a guest book when they arrive so the client knows when to expect company and can look forward to these interactions instead of not knowing when or if someone is going to arrive. This you are building intergenerational relationships, reducing isolation and boredom and improving emotional quality of life of an older person.

 

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