Game Plan for Better Healthcare

Strategy

The target facility for this research is Prairie Crossing Supportive Living Community.

Through research on the current status of healthcare for the elderly and an interview with a healthcare worker employed at Prairie Crossing, a solution to issues facing the care of the eldery will be proposed.

Total Wellness

Total Wellness

The aspects of "total wellness" will be examined further in the research portion of the presentation. However, as a brief introduction the aspects of "total wellness" for the purposes of this presentation will be:

• Spiritual Care
• Cognative Function, and
• Physical Activity

Life Span

Population Ageing: An Inescapable Future (2022) provides data showing that the population of the world is ageing meaning the topic of quality healthcare for the elderly is a relevant and ever growing issue.

Life Span

Spiritual Care

Spiritual Care

Heidari et al. (2019) showed a negative correlation between interventional spiritual care and perceived stress levels. This means that when the test group received interventional spiritual care they witnessed lower perceived stress levels than the control group who witnessed the same or higher perceived stress levels.

Cognative Functions

Cognitive Functions

Kilmova & Pikhart (2020) gave foreign language classes to elderly and found that the classes not only maintained but even enhanced the cognitive abilities of the elderly. Because of the condition of most of the residents at the supportive living community, foreign language classes may be too advanced, however there are other activities they can offer such as word and number puzzles and other games to keep their minds engaged and active.

Physical Activity

Physical Activity

Perez et al. (2021) found that decreased physical activity is a risk factor for frailty which is defined as “the state of increased vulnerability to internal or external stressors, determines a higher risk of negative health outcomes”. Just like cognitive ability, physical strength is a "use it or lose it" skill. Maintaining physical strength and health is very important but unfortunately difficult for many elderly.

Prairie Crossing

Prairie Crossing

Prairie Crossing Supportive Living Community is an independent and assisted living community located in Shabbona Illinois for seniors that offers a variety of services to accommodate the care needs of the residents. Some of these services include physician services, medication management, on-going assessments of residents’ health and welfare, on-site specialty visits as well as an additional campus when increased care assistance is needed (Prairie Crossing Supportive Living, 2022)

Background

Background

• What is your role in the company?

"I am a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA)."

• How long have you been with the company?

"A little over three years."

What changes in healthcare do you see that may need to be updated or made?

What Challenges Do You See?

"The changes I believe should be made in healthcare are we should be more about the patient/resident instead of the money, I feel healthcare lost compassion to greed some time ago. Working with older adults I have learned that most just want someone to listen to them, someone to visit. When workers are on a time limit to get certain jobs done we can't take the time to get to know our patients/residents. That is so unfortunate because they have a story of the past to tell. They are humans and deserve the time and care that we can and should not be all about the money."

How would you start to implement "total wellness"?

Thoughts on Total Wellness

“I agree that we should take more of an approach to total wellness by doing more hands on classes with puzzles and other memory games to keep their mind stimulated. It is also very important to keep our residents physically active. We do have a garden connected with the nursing home. It would be nice to do daily activities out in the garden weather permitting. We do have sittersize daily where residents come to the activity room and can sit and exercise their upper and lower body.”

Step 1

Step 1

Research difficulties facing the eldery population.

In my research I found that special attention needs to be given to the spiritual, cognative and physical care of the eldery.

Step 2

Talk with Prairie Crossing Supportive Living Community staff to plan out realistic methods to incorporate these goals into the care of the residents at the facility.

Step 2

Step 3

Reach out to local churches to schedule priests to visit the community.

Step 3

Step 4

Set up a puzzle room with other solo activities for cognitive function such as sudokus and crossword puzzles.

Step 4

Step 5

Schedule group games to increase interaction and cognitive function.

Step 5

Step 6

Schedule walks and events outside in the garden weather permitting.

Step 6

Step 7

Post a bulletin board and make flyers with the dates, times and locations of the scheduled events.

Step 7

Step 8

Invite the family and friends of the residents through email.

Step 8

References

Heidari, M., Borujeni, M. G., Abyaneh, S. K., & Rezaei, P. (2019). The

effect of spiritual care on perceived stress and mental health among the elderlies living in nursing home. Journal of Religion and Health, 58(4), 1328–1339. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00782-1

Klimova, B., & Pikhart, M. (2020, April 21). Current Research on the

Impact of Foreign Language Learning Among Healthy Seniors on Their Cognitive Functions From a Positive Psychology Perspective—A Systematic Review. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00765

Perez, L. M., Castellano-Tejedor, C., Soto-Bagaria, L., Ars, J., Inzitari,

M., Baro, S., Espi-Valbe, P., Cesari, M., Zambom-Ferraresi, F., Diaz-Gallego, F., Vilaro, J., & Enfedaque, M. B. (2021). Depressive symptoms, fatigue and social relationships influenced physical activity in frail older community-dwellers during the spanish lockdown due to the covid-19 pandemic. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18020808

Population Ageing: An Inescapable Future. (2022, January 5). Retrieved

October 16, 2022, from https://www.globalissues.org/news/2022/01/05/29746

Prairie Crossing Supportive Living. (2022, March 4). Prairie Crossing

Supportive Living - An Assisted Living Community. Retrieved September 18, 2022, from https://prairiecrossingliving.com/