This year’s annual NADONA conference was typical in all the good ways — but also extra special in an important way everyone can appreciate.
Conducting and documenting meaningful fire drills in LTC facilities
By
Stan Szpytek
Apr 16, 2024
From some of our earliest memories in elementary school as little kids, we all recall participating in fire drills on a periodic basis. Of course, the purpose of those fire drills was to train students,...
Moving the needle in nursing home vaccination rates
By
Michael Wasserman
Leslie Eber
Feb 14, 2024
On February 29, 2020, the first Coronavirus nursing home outbreak was reported by the media. Experts in geriatric and long-term care medicine immediately understood the dangers to nursing home residents....
Beyond the love meter
By
Gary Tetz
Mar 07, 2024
Love may be a many splendored thing, but it can also be elusive, at least in my experience. So when I read in McKnight’s about new “love meter” technology now available, my mind whirled with possibilities. ...
How do we offer hope when we can’t see beyond the next shift?
By
Julie Thorson
Oct 11, 2023
Find hidden hope and hold on to it. Hope in healthcare hides in plain sight. Hope is here. It’s unfortunate that sometimes the moments of frustration overtake our soft, but powerful, hopeful...
Start walking the staffing walk
By
Abby Spence
Feb 28, 2024
The long-term care industry is up against many different fronts right now. One of the main “fronts” is the potential staffing mandate that is ever looming. It is a dark cloud of a waiting game....
Love your SNF partners: A 2024 perspective
By
Renee Kinder
Feb 15, 2024
Valentine’s week for our family has also been mid-winter break for our kiddos. It’s a slow down after the holidays before the rush of spring. One of those special weeks yearly when there is no school,...
Whose life is it anyway?
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Sep 21, 2023
My family is full of therapists, and most of us work in skilled nursing. My sister, an experienced speech language pathologist, called to commiserate about one of her patients who had difficulty swallowing. ...
Fasten your seatbelts: It MIGHT be a bumpy ride
By
Steven Littlehale
Oct 13, 2023
It’s been a flurry of activity leading up to the implementation of the “new MDS.” For months our industry has been doing what we do best — rising to the occasion. Countless MDS training sessions,...
Falling by the wayside
By
Steven Levenson
Oct 24, 2023
This month’s column invokes several previous columns, one about medications and the other about knowing if we know what we don’t know. A recent medical journal article concluded that falls in...