A newer ideal of elderly caretaking, from the newspapers, translated…
As we’d gone to Takasaki to intern, a lady with hair all white pushed her wheelchair toward me, and handed me a photo of Mt. Fuji as a gift, and, passionately told us about how life in the facility was, with great enthusiasm, we’d become curious, and asked why she was so spirited? She’d said something that shocked us all, she said, that as she first started living here, although the employees were all very nice to her, she just, couldn’t get her spirits up, felt like she’s, not far from death; one day, the owner of the facility asked if there was something she’d wanted? She told him, that she’d hoped that after she dies, someone can throw her a funeral! After the owner of the facility heard, he’d promised to give that to her, and since that day forward, her spirits became, lifted by the day, she felt, that life got more and more interesting as the days passed by!
Not Just Taking Care of Their Physical Wellbeing and Needs, Also Helping Them Fulfill Their Final Wishes Too
like these??? Photo from online…
This was, the embodiment of the facilities that helped the elderly care for themselves, in the realms of what was possible, helping the elders accomplish their wishes, to allow them to do what they wanted, to live as they wished to, and, as the elders gained control over their own lives, their consciousness became, altered, and would become more willing, to do a lot of things, and, the contents of care are no longer limited to helping them go to the bathrooms when they needed to, but to help them accomplish their wishes and dreams, it’s a job of dream fulfillment, and, the caretaker-patient relationship would improve along with the shift of focus, the elder and the families trust in the facility increases, thus, reduce the risks greatly.
Yes, other than making sure that the elderly don’t trip and fall, to not get into accidents, more importantly, it builds up the trust, as caretaking is a complex sort of a job, other than emergent placement, the way to reduce the risks, is having long-term contact with the family members, to establish that goodwill of trust in each other, and, if and when accidents do happen, the huge matters would get to reduced down to smaller, and, both the homes and the families of the residents became more empathetic toward each other.
For the families, this was also, the process of “consciousness-altering”, I’d often gotten asked about how the families can be “educated”? My answer is that setting up a good communication and way of interaction with the families, in the past ways of caretaking, the most prevalent interactions between the facilities and the families occur “when the elderly had an accident” or “the fees are late”, and as the families came to the facilities to visit their loved ones, they would receive the complaints from the residents, and naturally, the families would turn the complaints toward the facilities, and, the facilities would list the elderly person as hard to care for, and this would tense up the relationship between the caretaker and the cared for.
getting with everybody else in the facility like this??? Photo from online…
Improve the Physical Abilities, But the Rehabilitation of Spirits is More Important
There’s a demented elderly woman in the Tong-Ren Ren-Ai Home, whom, upon her arrival, she’d, wondered, and the caretaker later observed, that as she’d passed by the plants, she’d stop and petted them, and, the caretakers discussed it with the families, and, took along the strawberry saplings that the elderly planted back home, and, these strawberries were very well taken care of, became healthy and pretty, and the elderly woman’s spirits became, lifted, and, the trust was established between the caretakers in the facility and the family members.
There are a lot of the caretaking units, as well as the caretaking professionals that mistook the self-help support as rehabilitation of abilities, and only asked to get to the goals of getting the elderly’s physiques back to where it was, and, disregarded the wills of the elderly, and, the end result would be, surely, the elderly is healthy and well physically, but, they’d become, disinterested in the program, this isn’t correct; stop hurrying the elders into doing something, and worry about what they can, or what they want to do, and, start discovering what the elder enjoys doing, what they can do, what they want to do, then, offer your assistance from the side, even if it’s getting them that cup of coffee they’d not had in a very long time, it can build up the elder’s self-confidence, helping them become more independent, and, this will help them improve their will to live on more independently, and, upping the independence, will help them move forward in their rehabilitation, and, the exercises shouldn’t also be, forced onto them either.
And so, this, is a new belief, that’s client-centered (kinda like C. Rogers’s psychotherapy techniques???), finding out what the elderly in the facilities are interested in doing, and, helping them do what they enjoyed, this would help the elders feel that they gained a little control back in their lives, after all, they are placed in those facilities, because they are no longer in control of their bodily functions, because their loved ones can no longer, take care of them, around the clock, and, by allowing the elders to decide WHAT and WHEN they want to do things, it gives them that sense of “I am my own boss!”, and it can boost their spirits, not to mention their levels of self-confidence too!