I’m starting to sound like a broken record (vinyl is coming back; the kids know what I mean), but I recently heard a therapist say the patient’s progress plateaued, so we have to stop therapy. Again. ...
Therapy should be more than productivity
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Apr 22, 2024
“I’m too sick for therapy today.” “Come back later.” “Leave me alone.” If you’ve worked in long-term care (or hospitals or LTACHs or acute rehab hospitals), you’ve heard...
The art of the pandemic
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Mar 26, 2024
Anyone who was working in healthcare in 2020 knows it was a rough year. When the lockdown happened, my staff with young children didn’t have daycare anymore. They didn’t have school anymore. The grandparents...
AI: Living in the future
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Oct 17, 2023
Artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare is a rapidly growing field that has the potential to revolutionize the way medical professionals diagnose and treat patients. The use of AI algorithms and machine...
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. ...
Are we done with COVID? Is COVID done with us?
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Jul 25, 2023
At last. I haven’t worn a mask in public in months, I’m starting to see friends again, I’m eating in restaurants again, and my new normal is the old normal. Life is good. There’s some hesitation...
Back to business as unusual
By
Jean Wendland Porter
May 30, 2023
On May 11, 2023, the Public Health Emergency ended in the United States. Obviously, the whole world is celebrating the diminished COVID-19 numbers and the drop in COVID-related deaths. But we’ve been...
Nursing shortages, and why ‘nobody wants to work anymore’
By
Jean Wendland Porter
May 02, 2023
Everyone has been feeling the nursing shortage, and now the Biden administration has tightened staffing rules, and that order will become a harbinger of more skilled nursing facility crises and closings....
What’s the worst that could happen?
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Jan 10, 2023
I got a board game for Christmas. It’s called The Worst Case Scenario, and requires the players to pull a card describing situations from discomfort to disaster and rate them from best to worst. Then...
Improve your hearing, improve your mind
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Dec 12, 2022
Doesn’t it seem like our residents with hearing loss escalate their dementia risk? Or is it that our residents living with dementia lose their hearing? Hearing loss and dementia seem to go hand-in-hand. ...