The development of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine has always been a matter of “when” not “if.” Significant advances in vaccine development, a coordinated global response...
Dear Santa, I wasn’t asking for a pandemic…
By
Martie Moore
Dec 16, 2020
Dear Santa, Last year, I started my letter to you by asking for one more moment with my mother. I asked you for the moment to be like it used to be. Little did I know, when I wrote those words, that I...
What now? The long-term effects of COVID-19 on transitional care
By
Barbara Giacomelli
Dec 16, 2020
The impact of COVID-19 on transitional and long-term care facilities will reverberate long after the pandemic itself is under control. While the immediate task is to maintain current coronavirus safety...
Managing a bah humbug holiday season
By
Eleanor Feldman Barbera, Ph.D.
Dec 15, 2020
By now many of us have viewed the viral video of residents gleefully shooting soft foam balls at laughing staff members dressed as reindeer dodging through a pine-tree “forest.” It’s the kind...
‘Notes from Underground,’ with apologies to Dostoevsky
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Dec 11, 2020
This is a throwback to college reading. It’s been a while for some of us, so bear with me for a minute. In 1864’s Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s narrator believes life in Utopia...
Employees share their pandemic experience
By
Nancy Anderson, RN, MA
Dec 11, 2020
“Although these are less than ideal circumstances, we have all pulled together as a team. That extra bit of support and acknowledgement we get from leaders makes a difference. Simple things can go a...
Moment of truth
By
Gary Tetz
Dec 10, 2020
Now that vaccines really are imminent and long-term care staff and residents look to be first in line, you’re probably holding your breath, desperately longing for an answer to the most important question...
The peculiar puzzle
By
Julie Thorson
Dec 09, 2020
As we are looking for things to do at home, we’ve returned to the “good ol’ days” of jigsaw puzzles. Of course, my husband and son made fun of me as I spent afternoons working on them only to have...
Nursing Home Quality Incentive Program? Hardly
By
Brendan Williams
Dec 08, 2020
Was any federal program ever more misnamed than the “Nursing Home Quality Incentive Program”? Rather than reward nursing home quality, it has effectively rewarded states that have out-of-control COVID-19...
With COVID, what’s on the surface matters deeply
By
Shula Jaron
Dec 07, 2020
More than 45% of all domestic COVID-19 fatalities have taken place in long-term care settings, and the response to outbreaks has been complicated by a lack of personal protective equipment and sufficient...