New Zealand is being urged to take a fresh look at the way it cares for the elderly to eliminate loneliness, helplessness and boredom.

These three things account for the bulk of suffering amongst older people, according to an Australian aged care consultant. Joanne Hope-Murray, a nursing lecturer and Vice Chair of Eden in Australia and New Zealand, was addressing delegates to the New Zealand Home Health Association (NZHHA) conference in Wellington today. The three day conference, themed Dollars & Sense, is looking at the future of aged and disability care in New Zealand against a backdrop of an ageing population and rising healthcare costs.

Ms Hope-Murray represents The Eden Alternative ‘ a new philosophy she says is revolutionising aged care around the world and reducing costs because it leads to happier, healthier clients and lower staff turnover.

The Eden Alternative ‘ is based on 10 principles aimed at making environments in which elderly people are cared for much more vibrant and interactive and their lives and activities more meaningful. Some of the principles include having continuing contact with plants, animals and children, less emphasis on structured routines and the opportunity to give as well as receive care, such as looking after pets. “Current funding models are based on a silo approach which is not consistent with a continuum of care for the elderly from assistance in the home to residential care. The Eden Alternative ‘ is about normalising everyday living, fostering lifelong learning and incorporating a community spirit by addressing the plagues of loneliness, helplessness and boredom.”

Ms Hope-Murray told delegates that real change requires a paradigm shift in the way we currently think about how we deliver services in the community and residential care.

“Our culture is so focussed on the young. We need to start valuing the wisdom and experience of our older citizens like some traditional cultures do.”

The Eden Alternative ‘, which was founded in America, has been operating in selected aged care facilities in Australia for a decade. New Zealand has nine facilities practising the philosophy.

Ms Hope-Murray told conference delegates, representing New Zealand home health care providers, that The Eden Alternative ‘ is equally applicable to the care of elderly living in the community.

Check out some serious back to school photos here

Bring it on baby...

The Eden Alternative was just a named a top ten innovation in health care Down Under.

Nice!

THE EDEN ALTERNATIVE

The Eden Alternative is a “culture-change” model that seeks to modify the care environment for elders. It identifies the three plagues; loneliness, helplessness and boredom as the main causes of suffering for elders in an aged care environment. The Eden Alternative seeks to eliminate these three plagues by changing the physical and social environment of an aged care facility.

Videos are fine; please share a few quotes from your talk on “senior ED”–a new concept for some of us. thanks

This is a fun challenge to boil things down.

1) Typical emergency departments are optimized for the acute care of ill and injured adults and children. People who have accompanied frail older people into the ER know first hand that these environments create many difficulties for older people.

2) The American population will grow older each and every day for the next half century. Aging is changing our society so we need to change our health care system.

3) Making emergency care better serve the needs of elders requires three distinct types of changes.

a) Changes to the physical setting so that care is delivered in a setting that makes the most of elders’ unique sensory patterns. To be specific, we need to change how light, sound, touch, temperature and taste are perceived by the people we are caring for.

b) Changes to the human environment including more and better education regarding the best ways to care for older people and a direct attack on ageism in the ER.

c) Changes in the organizational structure of the Emergency Center with better integration of social workers and pharmacists and better post visit planning.  Also the hospital needs to commit to an ongoing program of evaluation of improvement for its Senior Emergency Center.

The good news is that the Port Huron team is revved up, full of questions, and dedicated to improving the care they deliver to acutely ill and injured older people.  It was a dynamite day.

Thank you for your work Bill. I believe that to begin healing the social issue of agesim or the marginalization of any group for that matter, requires going deeper into the cause. By creating opportunties to allow the marginalized group a voice and increased visibility, be provided with opporutunites to positively shine can influence our culture. To be given opportunities to be active, vital, visable members of a community, they directly can be the catalyst to influence change. I have found this though our work at Circle of Care Project, that increased visability has a great power to dispell myths about aging and the fear of growing old which are created out of fear.

If we are committed to create ways of connecting our elders with the greater community and the generations, we provide an environment for healing. to happen that can influance the future of how we age in America.

She adds…

It was inevitable, boomers are driving culture change because we can’t imagine it being the way it is today for us as we age!. As we become more conscious, its evident that the alternative is nothing less than inhumane. Visibility is key. Older adults need to be out there and actively involved in every aspect of community life. Be a Change Maker. Go rock the boat in your city! Its ok if its slow, we are changing an entire culture and lasting change takes time. Hopeful and Relentless…

Want to feel inspired?
Click Here

But not too short for a fun video of a chihuahua who can run the table when he plays pool.

Pack Your PJs! How Living in Your Long-Term Care Community Will Change Your Life!Wednesday, September 8th, 2010, 3:00-4:00 p.m. ETGuest Panelist:  Jill Vitale-Aussem, NHA Would  you manage a restaurant you were afraid to eat in?  How about a hotel that you wouldn’t spend the night in?   Probably not, yet most of us in long term care management have never experienced life as a long-term care community member.

This webinar will describe experiences and growth that Jill Vitale-Aussem, a nursing home administrator, gleaned from her three different 24-hour stays in the nursing homes she was managing.  Only a few days left to register for this webinar! Want to learn more about and/or register for this webinar?Click here!

I am going to try to post some video through out the day.

Hope it works!

What’s on your mind today?

The writer is Canadian and his take on economics and the environment seem both insightful and provocative. That is not an easy combination to pull off.

Here is a taste test…

TED 2009 Prize winner Sylvia Earle discusses the state of the oceans, with striking footage. Her TED Prize wish:
I wish that you would use all means at your disposal – films! expeditions! the web! more! – to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.

“How can I bring you
To the Sea of Madness
I love you so much
It’s gonna bring me sadness
I’ve never seen you
Through these eyes before
Now I don’t believe it.” CSNY…

The first relates to a relative who has broken vertebrae due to osteoporosis and presumably is at risk for falls, who is now distressed by the “lap strap” that is used to prevent her standing on her own. There are no doubt many factors at play here. But number one is–the lap strap has to go. Let me explain:

The lap strap is a restraint and it hampers her ability to move or feel free, thus increasing her level of distress. It will ultimately make her weaker, through immobilization and atrophy and more likely to fall when she does stand. It will also increase discomfort and stiffness, and elevate the risk of other problems (leg edema, constipation, pressure sores, etc).

Try this exercise: Put yourself in the lap strap for one hour. Not 45 minutes, not 55. No fudging. Gotta go to the bathroom? Sorry. Can’t quite reach that pad and pencil across the table? Too bad. The chair you though was comfy starts to be very unyielding when you can’t shift you weight. Your butt becomes uncomfortable and your knees stiffen. Then imagine you are confused and when your caregiver walks out of sight, how trapped you might feel. Now imagine wearing it for hours on end.

Restraints don’t work, but they are necessitated when care partners become overwhelmed by the challenge and cannot find another safe solution. Unfortunately, the next step is usually to medicate the distress caused by the restraint. It’s like hitting someone on the head repeatedly and giving them Tylenol for the pain.

The reality is that if a care environment is stressed to the point that restraints and sedation are the best options, then it may well be an indication that this is no longer the best care for the individual. Because of their fear of nursing homes (not totally unfounded, I might add), people cling to home-based care to the point where it becomes a more detrimental situation. When a person needs to be restrained at home (if this is the case here), then a good-quality nursing home is a better situation for all concerned.

The second writer expresses the very common feelings of (1) grief at the loss of communion with a loved one whose cognition has changed, and (2) fear that the same might happen to him. He shares the very common feeling that he would rather be “put to sleep” than experience the illness. Many people do just that–commit suicide when they learn of their dementia.

Without trying to sugar-coat this very challenging illness, I would like to offer that much of the grief we feel is a result of the stigma, negative imagery and excess disability that has resulted from a system of care that fears Alzheimer’s so greatly that all we see in our approach to care is disease, deficits and death. This leads to overmedication, disempowerment, isolation and institutionalized life (which can occur in ANY living environment). By moving from a fear-based approach (that biases our views of the person’s capability for well-being and active engagement) to more of the approach espoused in my book, by the Real Care movement and others (such as Jane Verity’s Spark of Life approach), people have experienced unexpected moments of joy and connection, and have reignited the spirits of people who were thought to be long-lost to the illness.

Sorry folks, but there is no cure on the horizon. Rather than despair, however, this should be a call to find the very real ways that we can totally re-make the experience of Alzheimer’s for those who live with the illness and their care partners.

Please write back if any of this needs further explanation. It is a difficult and complex topic.

Here’s our first entry.

By they way I could not make it all the way through the video.

I feel sorry for this nice lady and wish she could feel more comfortable with her true self…

But there is a process.

I usually skip the part with the knife.

The objection here is derived from the same rotten core that we find at the heart of ageism.

Rather than being judged as an individual this female monk is being judged as a member of a class.

The same kind of thinking drives mandatory retirement schemes.

Anderson Cooper Offered $1 MILLION To Ditch Gray Hair
Anderson Cooper has reportedly been offered $1 million to get rid of his gray hair for the next five years, the Sun-Sentinel reports.

Have at it…

In order to understand them at this point in their lives I think it makes the most sense to refer to them as members of the “Post War Generation.”

I’ll be writing much more about this in the months to come.

The story in American history I most like to tell is the one about how women got the right to vote 90 years ago this month. It has everything. Adventure! Suspense! Treachery! Drunken legislators!

But, first, there was a 70-year slog.

Which is really the important part. We always need to remember that behind almost every great moment in history, there are heroic people doing really boring and frustrating things for a prolonged period of time.

That great suffragist and excellent counter, Carrie Chapman Catt, estimated that the struggle had involved 56 referendum campaigns directed at male voters, plus “480 campaigns to get Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters, 47 campaigns to get constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into state constitutions; 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks, 30 campaigns to get presidential party campaigns to include woman suffrage planks in party platforms and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses.”

And you thought health care reform was a drawn-out battle.

Read the whole thing here

The wiki has a great summary here

The Happy Winners: Of the Right to Vote

From the WIki…

Portrait of the artist as a young man.

In the fall of 1822, the 15-year old Longfellow enrolled at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. His grandfather was a founder of the college and his father was a trustee.

By all accounts he was a gifted student and deserved admission on his own merit. That said, he clearly started life with the wind at his back.

There, Longfellow met Nathaniel Hawthorne, who would later become his lifelong friend. He joined the Peucinian Society, a group of students with Federalist leanings.

As a college senior he wrote, honestly, to his father:

“I will not disguise it in the least… the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature, my whole soul burns most ardently after it, and every earthly thought centres in it… I am almost confident in believing, that if I can ever rise in the world it must be by the exercise of my talents in the wide field of literature.”

He later wrote, “Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.” More than half a century, and a score of books, later he was accosted by a female fan on the street in front of his house.

…unaware to whom she was speaking, she asked Longfellow: “Is this the house where Longfellow was born?”

Longfellow told her it was not.

The visitor then asked if he had died here.

“Not yet”, he replied.

Longfellow’s time came three years later.

In March 1882, Longfellow went to bed with severe stomach pain. He endured the pain for several days with the help of opium before he died surrounded by family on Friday, March 24, 1882.[84] He had been suffering from peritonitis.

He was 75 years old and, in our time, could easily have been cured of the infection that killed him.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

His last few years were spent translating the poetry of Michelangelo. Scholars generally regard the work as autobiographical, reflecting the translator as an aging artist facing his impending death.

I’ll give him the last word.

The Rainy Day

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

Kavan Peterson

Here’s a blog that boldly goes where mainstream media won’t dare tread — Better Than I Ever Expected: Sex and Aging, by Joan Price:

Join me in talking out loud about senior sex! I am an advocate for ageless sexuality and the author of Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty and the upcoming Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex, both from Seal Press. This blog offers news, views, and reviews related to sex and aging. I hope that by bringing the topics that concern us out in the open and sharing our attitudes and experiences, we’ll start to change society — one mind at a time! Besides writing and speaking about senior sexuality, I’m also a fitness writer, a contemporary line dance instructor, and a speaker. You can read more about me at http://www.joanprice.com.

This is exactly what ChangingAging.org is all about, and a great example of how social media can be used to bypass MSM to spread a pro-aging message. Joan is doing an awesome job using her blog to promote her books and smash stereotypes about aging and sex. Earlier this week she shared a post outlining the chapter’s in her new book — Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex:

1. The Old Ways Don’t Do It Anymore

2. Death of Desire

3. Sex Toys: Now More Than Ever

4. Is This My Marriage? Together yet Alone

5. Talking about Sex

6. Off the Beaten Path: Nontraditional Relationships

7. How Could You Do This to Me?

8. Sex with Myself

9. Unlearning Our Upbringing – Women’s Stories

10. Unlearning Our Upbringing – Men’s Stories

11. Sex Hurts: Vulvar/Vaginal Pain

12. Reclaiming Sexuality after Cancer

13. Erectile Dysfunction: What Men Don’t Say Out Loud

14. Erectile Dysfunction: What Women Say, Do, and Need to Know

15. No Way Back: Living with a Spouse with Alzheimer’s Disease

16. Death, Grieving–and Then What?

17. Sensuality for Hire

18. DWO: Dating While Old(er)

19. Safer Sex – Yes, At Our Age

20. Why Sex is Better Now than Ever: Readers Describe the Joys of Older-Age Sex

Dr. Bill Thomas

The War on drugs has created some unfortunate collateral damage.

Less than half of American cancer patients receive adequate painkillers, according to the American Pain Foundation. One reason is that doctors are terrified of being accused of drug-trafficking if they over-prescribe.

Matt Yglesias recommends this book…

When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment

The author argues…

“The first step in getting away from brute force is to want to get away from brute force: to care more about reducing crime than about punishing criminals, and to be willing to choose safety over vengeance when the two are in tension.”

When grappling with crime control, he advocates additional considerations be factored into a real solution -concentration of resources and direct communication of deterrent threats to likely offenders.

Whenever a system becomes transaction based rather than relationship based, a door swings wide open and de-humanization along with a vicious even-handedness walk right in. We want Real Care Now.

Go Here to make your voice heard

Dr. Bill Thomas

Feisty Blogger “Atrios” went to see a concert. His report…

The Old People Are Alright

Had good seats to see Spoon and The Arcade Fire last light. Was surprised by the number of old people who were there, and by old people I don’t mean old buggers like me, I mean people more than a couple years older than I am and who weren’t there with their kids. These are two bands that are reasonably popular and you’re aware of them if you’re at all plugged into the indieish music scene, but don’t have complete mass marketing behind them.

Anyway, point is not “good that old people like these two bands,” the point is good for old people who don’t live in an endless nostalgia loop. Life goes on after The Eagles reunions end.

Atrios is, I think, 38 years old.

Old is a relative term.

Arcade FIre’s “My Body is a Cage”

Look forward to the deluxe nostalgia Arcade Fire box set due out 2025

Dr. Bill Thomas

One man’s story…

I’d like to hear (“haha”) some noise related health care stories if you’ve got ‘em…

Virgil Thomas

I was browsing the Internet the other day and I came across an article about young conservatives protesting the nomination/possible confirmation of Solicitor General Elaina Kagan to the Supreme Court.

“From the podium, the speakers railed against what they say is Kagan’s obvious membership in that most insidious of societies, The Order Of The Activist Judge. The conservative complaints about the temporary curtailment of military recruiting at Harvard Law School while Kagan was dean, her self-professed “legal progressivism” and her record as a Clinton White House staffer on issues like guns and abortion played a prominent role in the protest. There was a special emphasis on the potential length of a Kagan term on the court, which, as the youth in attendance rightfully pointed out, could mean she would rule with her socialist agenda showing well into the protesters’ middle age.”

Obviously filling a seat on the Supreme Court is a big deal; many justices serve for over a quarter of a century, and during that time have the opportunity to make landmark decisions. (Think Brown V. Board of Education)

By most accounts Kagan is very confirmable. Andrew Pincus writes that during Kagan’s confirmation hearings, Senate Republicans could find no issues that had traction on the nominee.

The Millennial generation trends to a liberal point of view but it will be interesting to observe the conservatives of this generation. There is an old saying that goes “If the facts are on your side, bang on the facts. If the law is on your side, bang on the law. If neither the facts nor the law is on your side, bang on the table.” It will be interesting to see which of these our generation chooses to bang.

V-Star 4