Culture Change in the News
Throughout April, several media outlets have reported on culture change ideals, including person-centered care and the Green House Model for nursing homes.
The Atlantic
Nursing homes affiliated with the Green House Model are helping to transform long-term in the U.S. by promoting better care for residents and better working conditions for staff, writes Atlantic staff writer Alana Semuels in an April 21 article.
Semuels tells the story of Barry Berman, a Massachusetts nursing home owner who in 2010 opened the Leonard Florence Center for Living after seeing his mother have a bad experience in a traditional nursing home.
Leonard Florence was the first Green House home to open in an urban setting, a PHI “best practice” article from 2010 says.
Berman has begun an ambitious project to transfer certain Green House values, including self-managed work teams and resident-centered care practices, to Chelsea Jewish Nursing Home, a traditional nursing home that he owns.
New York Times
The ideals of person-centered care or relationship-centered care are improving the quality of nursing home care, particularly among people who have dementia, an April 1 New York Times opinion piece argues.
In the piece, Mary Ersek, a nurse and professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, writes that person-centered care “translates simple preferences and habits into daily routines — does Earl like his eggs over easy or scrambled? Blue sweater or green sweatshirt?”
For people with dementia, person-centered care can be more complicated; nursing home staff should collaborate closely with residents’ families to “choose care that optimizes comfort,” Ersek writes.
Provider
The April issue of Provider magazine features an interview with Dr. Bill Thomas, who talks about his “Age of Disruption” tour, which will hit 30 cities throughout 2015.
The tour will “explore new ideas, practices, and models to transform the experience of care and caregiving,” he said.
Dr. Thomas is an internationally recognized aging expert and was the co-creator of the Green House Project and a co-founder of the Eden Alternative.
