I was conducting a Kind Dining training session recently for a group of employees in a nursing home when a young charge nurse spoke up. I had just handed her a plate so we could go over the proper way to serve food in a dining room.
I was a waitress in a dinner house restaurant for several years to put myself through college, she said. I have never, not once, thought to interject the serving skills I learned there into our dining room service.
After years of layoffs, pay freezes, and pay cuts, the job market is finally showing signs of recovery. And although this gives some healthcare professionals a reason to jump ship, there are actually several great reasons to stay right where you are.
There's a lot of 'buzz' about social media, but there's no question that it will help your website get exposure. It's essential to apply these strategies, because social networking has become integral for Senior Living websites.
These changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes, nothing remains quite the same, through all of the islands and all of the highlands, if we couldn't laugh we would all go insane. Jimmy Buffett.
Laughter. It's the common denominator that keeps us together through the changes in the Senior Living industry. The wonderful feeling in knowing that older adults are receiving professional care is a result of hard work and long hours. We deserve to remind ourselves it's all worth it.
Negativity is not unlike the diseases and infections we deal with on a daily basis in healthcare. Indeed, negativity is a pattern of pessimistic thinking that quickly spreads, causing problems that impact employee morale, motivation, loyalty, creativity, and ultimately your organization's success. Before you know it, negativity can infect the entire staff, wrecking havoc that is hard to repair. So what are healthcare leaders to do? In most cases, the best approach is very similar to how we fight disease and infection: its all about prevention.
Judy, the dining services director in a large Continuing Care Residential Community (CCRC) in Oregon, recently shared this story with me. Judy's father is a resident where she works. One day, he suggested she hire her brother, who is autistic, to serve meals in the dining room. She kindly said, Dad you know it wouldn't be appropriate because with autism its difficult to connect with people and Michael doesn't have serving skills. Her dad looked at her, shrugged his shoulders and said, "but, honey, you hire people like him already.