Planning for now, planning for the future

Planning is an important part of anything in life. You plan what to eat for breakfast, what you’re going to do for your day, goals for yourself, what to wear to the fancy dress party and your finances. Weddings get planned, funerals get planned, and occasionally, having kids gets planned.

Some of these are innate things. You don’t really “plan” them, you just do them. Waking up in the morning and brushing your teeth, getting your morning coffee, breathing…they all are just part of what happens from day-to-day. But planning for the future of senior care is a more daunting task and sometimes in the course of laying down our plans and making them and following through on them, they fail.

This summer I had a really great opportunity to help lead a nine day canoe trip through Algonquin Park. I planned and planned, fretted, and planned more. Packed, repacked, and then unpacked what I had repacked. All before even leaving my house.

From there I got to the camp, met up with my seven teenage charges and the other fellow leader and we planned, and prepared, planned some more and on it went for the four days leading up to our departure. All the time my level of stress and worry went up exponentially. This was compounded by an increasing amount of medical situations that came to light: diabetes, head lice, bladder control issues, several cases of asthma …you get my point. Every time I uncovered one more thing that I would need to be concerned about it seemed like twenty others immediately followed.

For nine days my fellow leader and I became the “parental units” for these teenagers. We dressed their wounds and mended bruised egos, worried about the weather and whether everyone’s spirits were good. I treated mysterious cases of itchy backs, and dispensed medicine with the best of them. We cooked and even managed to keep somewhat clean.

Along the way our group faced many obstacles. The first of these, a 2300m portage, slowed us down so much that the following day we had to make up a day and a half’s worth of travel. Our exhausted charges had been looking forward to a warm campfire and a hot meal at the end of that day but a severe thunderstorm that rolled through sent us running for tents to share what should have been the next day’s lunch (pitas, peanut butter, farmer’s sausage and GORP). Tents, clothes, and sleeping bags were all soaked and spirits sank to an all time low.

It was amazing to see how various people responded to the pressure. Some dealt with it like champs, slogging on through the day without complaint. Others grew quieter and quieter as our long day wore on, eventually retreating to their own world, and uttering words to no one. I’m proud, and glad to say that our entire band of canoe weary travelers survived with nothing more than blisters, sunburns, bug bites and muscles to show for it.

So how does this apply to Senior Care Canada? Well, besides giving me a nice break from working inside at a computer all day, it made me realize how much planning really goes into simple everyday tasks. I’m sure you face something similar to this in your daily senior care life.

You plan when, how and where residents will eat their meals, from there someone plans how best to get everyone to the eating area. There was already an advance plan set out for what the residents will eat at this meal, another whole set of planning happened with the food supplier well before the food was even delivered to your facility.

After this there’s a plan for how to feed everyone who is now in that area. While residents are eating, someone has planned ahead with the delivery of medication and is now distributing the proper pills to the right people.

Maybe by this time some residents have finished eating and there is a plan in place for the collection and sanitation of the dishes and linens that were used during the meal. That plan was put in place to keep the sanitary needs of the residents and staff in mind. And this is only one day!

What about plans for the future?

Some days it is more than easy to get caught up in planning for the daily rituals of a facility that we forget to plan for the future. Technology is one aspect that needs to see greater implementation in Canadian care facilities and I’m looking right at your paperwork!

Paperwork is often cited as a factor that debilitates most nursing home staff. Technology is now everywhere but, unfortunately paper now seems to be ubiquitous. Inspection reports, letters of complaint, medical records, are all on paper. Digitize it; make it portable.

A government run reporting system that not only allows for decreased paperwork, and increased productivity but real-time reporting to the Ministry improves the entire system. Make it part of a Blackberry or iPhone system and you have instant access and portability.

Yes, I know, I said government, and we all know how slow that can move. So while we’re waiting for that bright idea to percolate to the top, look at ways to decrease the planning and paperwork that you and your staff are faced with everyday.

Maybe it’s something as simple as using Google’s free online Google Documents program to store electronic copies of training manuals, calendars and meeting minutes. Make it accessible for your staff. Encourage them to reduce the amount of paper that they use in their daily work life.

In an era of environmental sustainability, it’s not only the responsible thing to do, it can also be the most sane thing to do.