Personalizing the Care Giving Process

It happens sometimes: an older adult who we care about requires care from an outside source, whether that be a caregiver who comes into their home, or whether nursing home care is necessary. When that happens, one of our biggest responsibilities is to ensure that the care they receive is appropriate, humane, and individual to their needs-all of their needs: physical, mental, and emotional. Of the three, physical is the easiest to find and ensure; mental and emotional needs are more elusive.

As a nurse who worked in long term care for more than twenty years, I feel I can speak with some authority on this issue, and provide some insight to those who have never had the privilege of serving older adults on an ongoing basis in a professional manner.

While it's very true that many people who reside in nursing homes do not suffer from dementia, it is also true that even those with mental faculties intact still are often not are their best to represent their emotional needs. They are in a foreign setting, with someone else "in charge." Even though technically, this is not so, for all the world it feels like it to the person who has someone else flipping on the lights early in the morning, serving meals cooked by a stranger, and had perhaps a myriad of people who have seen their bare bodies.

But there is a way to combat what can seem like a production line of care, and that is to ensure the staff, whether in a nursing home or providing in-home care, see that older adult as an individual. Each of us don't consider our habits and routine at home to be anything out of the ordinary, but in actuality, everyone's is a little bit different from anyone else's.

One way to make that older adult "come alive" as it were to the caregiver is to offer a brief biography of that person's life. If the older adult is able/willing to do so, have them write their autobiographical information; if not, write it for them. Nothing more than a page; caregivers don't have time to read that much info. Write things like: "I married when I was fifteen...everyone did back then...and settled into a routine of caring for my house and husband" or "I worked the night shift for thirty years; people who know me say I have my nights and days mixed up, but for me, it seems just right."

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