At Legacy Care Home, we believe the best care plans are developed through a collaborative process that engages the resident, their family, and our caregivers in the creation of a plan tailored to their unique needs, goals, and values. Our “whole person” approach takes into account all aspects of our residents’ lives, including mind, body and spirit. This is important because we aim to do more than simply keep your loved one safe. We want to support their mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health to help them achieve and maintain the highest quality of life possible.
How do we do this? By starting every care plan from scratch. We don’t have a template or one-size-fits-all approach. Of course, we do believe in using a systematic method to make sure that we understand their personal needs, goals, and values. With that in mind, here’s how our RN performs an individualized assessment for each resident:
Needs
We start with a general medical assessment to gather their general medical history, health conditions, and medications. This involves working closely with not only residents’ primary care providers, but specialists, including physical and occupational therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, neurologists, and any additional providers engaged in their care.
Next we conduct a functional assessment to evaluate their ability to perform activities of daily living, like dressing, eating, bathing and basic mobility. This is followed by a cognitive assessment to evaluate functions like memory, decision-making, and general cognitive function. And finally, an emotional and social assessment is undertaken to evaluate their emotional and psychological well-being, including their overall mental health and the social support network.
Any reputable care home should conduct these types of assessments — but in our opinion they’re not enough. We never want to tailor a care plan solely around our residents’ limitations. We believe an understanding of their goals and values is also important in order to create a plan that is engaging and meaningful to them, and supports a high quality of life.
Goals
Everyone, regardless of their age, needs to feel a sense of accomplishment, or at least progress, and we work with our residents and their families to identify realistic and achievable short-term and long-term goals. Short-term goals can be as simple as stabilizing their conditions or ensuring their safety, while longer-term goals can involve more ambitious aspirations, like greater independence, skills improvement, and improved well being. Just like their needs, their goals can and will change over time, and we frequently review them with our residents and their families to assess progress, ensure that goals are still realistic and attainable, and set new ones when appropriate. Nothing makes our staff happier than to celebrate with a resident when they’ve achieved an important goal they set for themselves.
Values
Finally, residents’ values are considered when developing a care plan because it ensures that the care we provide respects their personal preferences and beliefs. We strive at all times to make sure our residents feel heard and respected, and that they know that their values and preferences are important to us. Incorporating values into our care planning helps us take a more holistic approach that considers not just their physical health, but their emotional, social, and spiritual well-being as well. This includes being culturally sensitive and appropriate, respectful of their personal space and autonomy, and clear in all of our communications with them and their families.
Why do we take these additional steps and go beyond the typical intake assessments? Because we want all of our staff to engage our residents as individuals, building personal connections that help residents feel like they’re living in a home, not just a care facility. Our model is fundamentally different from most other senior care providers in the Twin Cities. We provide a family-style living home with some of the lowest resident-to-staff ratios in our region: 3 or 4-to-1, which is often five times lower than other senior living facilities.
"We want all of our staff to engage our residents as individuals, building personal connections that help residents feel like they’re living in a home, not just a care facility"
The result is not just a higher level of care, but an ability to connect with our residents as people and help them live their best lives. By creating individualized care plans that incorporate their needs, goals, and values, we’ve experienced improved resident outcomes, reduced illness and injury, and — most importantly — a higher quality of life for our residents and their families.
So, when you’re evaluating care homes (either for yourself or for a loved one) look for those that take a deeply personal approach — an approach that considers not just the needs of their residents, but their goals and their values as well. Because we all want to be treated as individuals.
