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Family celebrations are a lot harder these days because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is even more challenging to celebrate with loved ones in a memory care facility where health protocols are stricter to protect the elderly from contracting the virus.

Thankfully, these facilities allow virtual visits so you can still share quality time with your loved one even if only through Zoom calls. So why not make one of those visits more memorable during the holidays by trying out these four Zoom games with your loved one and family members?

Bingo

It is one of the most relatable games for seniors and you can have a great time playing it too. Bingo is such a hit no matter what the occasion is, and you can let other family members and even your loved one’s neighbors join in on the fun to make the experience more memorable.

You can send out printable bingo sheets to the memory care facility and ask the staff to print it for your loved one and their friends. Then, on your call, you can designate someone to call out the numbers while the players get busy blocking off their cards. You can even send some snacks over to make the call more fun.

Charades

Charades are another party classic, whether it is Christmas, Hanukkah or any other celebration. Seniors love it too, not to mention that it is a good brain exercise. You can organize two teams including your loved one in the memory care facility.

In case you are still not familiar with the game, one team chooses a word under a category and acts it out for teammates to guess. Whoever has the most correct guesses after a set of words will win the game.

Trivia

You will probably think that your older loved one will not be able to answer questions in a trivia. But try it and you will surely be surprised at how good they can be, especially in answering questions on a topic you know they love.

You just need to come up with a set of trivia questions that your family members including your elderly loved one could guess. You can even squeeze in some questions about the family to make the game personal.

The Alphabet Game

Of course, you cannot miss one of the easiest yet most fun game that you can play on Zoom with your loved one. The Alphabet Game does not need any materials. You just need to have a conversation with each sentence running through the letters of the alphabet. This game can last for hours and you will not even notice how amazing your topics have already been.

No matter what the occasion or the game that you choose to play, what is important is that you make time for your loved ones in memory care facility.

After all, they deserve the best love and care even if they are living in a facility where they can be given the best quality of life.

For more information on our memory care program, click here to be redirected to our memory care page

Fallbrook Assisted Living is proud to offer its services to Fremont, NE, and surrounding areas and cities: Arlington, Cedar Bluffs, Ames Nickerson, Fontanelle, Arlington, Leshara, Colon, and Hooper

While the holiday season might be met with some unforeseen difficulties this year, there are still plenty of ways to bring joy and cheer into the season. For most of us this will mean smaller gatherings, and zoom holiday parties, but no matter what the occasion it’s important to still right in the seasonal spirit.

If you have family members who are in one of the country’s assisted living facilities, they may be feeling a little more down this season having to miss the normal family celebrations. While zoom is a perfect way to include them at home, there is no better time than Christmas to make them feel extra loved and special with these five holiday gift ideas:

A custom photo album

Memories bring back great times, emotions and experiences for seniors who are suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. So, what better way to ignite your loved ones’ memory than by giving them a custom photo album that contains the most beautiful photos of you and your family together? These might be the gift that just keeps on giving as these photos can even help introduce some daily memory exercises for your loved one in assisted living facilities.

You can add texts and notes on each photo to make them look and feel extra special.

Activity books

Seniors in assisted living facilities are encouraged to engage in different activities and games to allow them to socialize and keep their memories fresh.

If your loved one likes art, then you can give her adult coloring books that will surely keep her busy for hours. If the senior loves solving puzzles, you can opt for a crossword or Sudoku puzzle. You can also go for playing cards, board games or video games that seniors will surely love.

A special relaxation treat

Some assisted living facilities have their own salons and spas that you can treat your loved one to for a day. You can also fin a local spa or salon where you can book a day of pampering with your loved one where you can both enjoy a facial, massage, manicure, haircut, and even threading.

Seniors rarely have the chance to get themselves treated to a spa or salon day, so your loved one will surely appreciate this sweet gesture in time for the holidays.

An e-reader, tablet, or phone

Although most seniors are not well versed with technology, staff and members of assisted living facilities are more than happy to aid your loved one in mastering the basics of a tablet or e-reader. This way, you can still allow them to enjoy the convenience of these gadgets to entertain themselves and keep in touch with you.

If your loved one is into reading books, you can give her an Amazon Kindle or if she is into movies, then she’d love a new tablet with a subscription to Netflix or Hulu.

A beautiful blanket

Nothing is more comforting for a senior who experiences anxiety than a beautiful, weighted blanket. This type of blanket has been scientifically proven to help reduce anxiety and distress, and it is beneficial for seniors who have dementia or those that have difficulty sleeping or always anxious while in the assisted living facility.

Do not forget to make your loved one feel loved and remembered during the holiday season.

We may be experiencing some very rough times, but we should always make the effort to spend time with the people who once made sure that our holidays were extra special. Which one of these five gift ideas are you planning to buy for a loved one?

Want to see what kind of assisted living facilities we have to offer at Fallbrook? Click here to check out our assisted living page!

Fallbrook Assisted Living is proud to offer its services to Fremont, NE, and surrounding areas and cities: Arlington, Cedar Bluffs, Ames Nickerson, Fontanelle, Arlington, Leshara, Colon, and Hooper

Chances are, you have a family member who’s about to move into one of the assisted living facilities in your area. With the baby boomers reaching their late adulthood years, there has been a steady growth of seniors moving into these facilities so they can get more supervised care and a better quality of life as they deal with the different changes of growing old.

Since this is a highly emotional decision for the family, it’s not uncommon for you to wonder about how involved you should be in the care of your loved one.

Here, we help you understand your role better as a family member and how you could help give your loved one an excellent life while in assisted living:

You can be involved without being nosy.

You want your family member to feel comfortable and loved while in assisted living facilities and that’s what the staff is there for. You can be involved by making sure that you are available to talk with the team about matters regarding the care of your loved one.

You can also be present whenever you can without invading the space of the healthcare team to allow them to do their job right. If you see a problem, don’t criticize.

Instead, make suggestions that will help them improve the quality of care. Never step over the boundaries of employees because they know better than you when it comes to your loved one’s care.

Invest in quality time with your loved one.

Whenever you have the time to visit your loved one, make sure to spend your time well not only in caring for him but also in helping out the facility. Some spouses usually visit residents almost daily and aside from spending time with them, they also volunteer to help out with preparing meals or assisting other residents without interfering with the job of the staff. How you spend your time with your loved one is more important than the length of time you spend with him, so make every minute count.

Be an advocate but never feel entitled.

Staff members in assisted living facilities love family members who are advocates of their loved ones’ wellbeing. They are there when needed and they do everything to help out in the care of the residents.

But there are also times when families become too unrealistic about their expectations from the healthcare team. Some would start demanding that their loved one needs to be cared for by one nurse, but that can be very unrealistic in an assisted living setting where there’s no one-to-one staff-to-resident ratio.

As a family member, you only want the best for your loved one. After all, that’s the primary goal of sending him to an assisted living facility.

But you also need to know your boundaries when it comes to your involvement in the care of your loved one to maintain a good relationship with the staff and ultimately, provide the best care possible to the resident.

Fallbrook Assisted Living is proud to offer its services to Fremont, NE, and surrounding areas and cities: Arlington, Cedar Bluffs, Ames Nickerson, Fontanelle, Arlington, Leshara, Colon, and Hooper

Nursing homes and assisted living facilities to benefit from technological innovations to aid in the care and management of records for patients. Here are just a few of the notable contributions of technology to health care.

IT Systems

Generally, information technology will be able to address the challenges in-home health care, including the large geographic distances, making resources more costly for rural patients. Such would include advances in social networking tools, telecommunication, and Web solutions to support health care delivery and education.

Information technology can be introduced in nursing homes in a variety of ways including the following functions.

Active monitoring and management

• Home-based disease management through telehealth applications
• Web-based communities for patients in-home care
• Personal health care records

Passive monitoring and management

• Smart homes
• Robotic applications

Tele-Health Applications

This type of technology offers a platform for supporting disease management for patients in nursing homes diagnosed with chronic conditions as well as their families.

Web-Based Communities

The Internet also supports a consumer-centric model and enables the creation of networks for the community, home care patients diagnosed with the same condition, families or other informal caregivers, and the public in general.

That is, in addition to the Web-based applications focused on the institution-centric approach and connect home care patients to health care providers. These networks are referred to as virtual communities that share the same goal, interest, needs, or activity.

Personal Health Records

This is defined as the electronic record of health-related information of an individual that conforms to the recognized interoperability standards of the country. A personal health record is a tool used for sharing health information, helping transform patients into better-educated health care consumers, and increasing health understanding.

Smart Homes

A house equipped with technology as an integral part of the infrastructure is considered a smart home intended to facilitate the monitoring of residents and increasing the quality of life. This technology does not require operation or training by the resident, but standalone units are used to be controlled by the end-user.

The advancement of technology has prompted the development of smart home applications around the world. One example is the development of Smart Medical Home, a highly controlled environment that involves biosensors, infrared sensors, and video cameras.

Robotic Applications

It is a method that employs artificial intelligence principles, and sometimes, with anthropomorphic features used in the clinical setting, mostly in experimental mode surgery, and robotic-assisted laparoscopic pyeloplasty, and cystectomy.

One of the applications considered is the robotic dog, which is used as part of animal-assisted therapy in treating loneliness. Another example is the therapeutic robotic harp seal designed to create a calming sensation.

Final Thoughts

There are clear advantages to integrating IT in nursing homes or home care facilities. Such would include easy and efficient communication amid the geographic distance. Moreover, it enables the generation of new types of data without the need for health care providers to be physically present in the residential setting.

Fallbrook Assisted Living is proud to offer its services to Fremont, NE, and surrounding areas and cities: Arlington, Cedar Bluffs, Ames Nickerson, Fontanelle, Arlington, Leshara, Colon, and Hooper

As a family member grows older, the need for senior housing becomes inevitable at some point. It is to not only make it easier for the family members who already bear the burden of caring for them. But also to make sure that they get the best quality of care from professionals who specialize in elderly care. But before they can move into this type of living community, a needs assessment should be done by the staff first to know the elderly’s physical, cognitive, and even emotional health.

Most senior housing facilities use an evaluation packet or checklist that will allow healthcare staff to determine the level of care needed by a senior who will be under their care.

Some facilities use a “point system” to rank seniors while others just go through a comprehensive list of questions and base their decisions from the answers.

But in general, healthcare staff will gauge the following areas to make sure that an elderly person gets the care that they need while in senior housing:

Level of orientation

In this stage, the senior is gauged according to his level of orientation that will determine if he is at risk for wandering, forgetting things, and getting injured due to memory loss and other cognitive problems that may be related to his current health condition.

The staff specifically assesses for awareness to people, places and time, forgetfulness and occasional confusion, general disorientation and poor judgment, unsafe behaviors, and cognitive deficits.

Fall risk

A lot of seniors are victims of accidental falls that may leave them debilitated or worse, dead. This is why it’s very important to determine an elderly’s risk for falls by assessing if he has experienced a fall at home and if he had more than one accident in the last three months.

Bathroom independence

The bathroom can be one of the biggest challenges for seniors, especially those who have physical limitations that make it more dangerous for them to take a bath or empty their bowel and bladder alone.

In a senior housing community, seniors are given the assistance that they require when using the bathroom. It is the reason why they are assessed for their level of independence when it comes to emptying their bowel and bladder.

Or if they require prompting to go to the bathroom, or if they have problems with incontinence, if they need to use assistive devices and protective garments or if they need constant assistance when going to the bathroom are some of the factors to be considered.

The takeaway

Every senior housing community has the ultimate goal of offering the best possible care to seniors depending on their needs assessment.

This is why a needs assessment is the first step towards moving to senior housing and probably the most important part because it allows healthcare staff to really assess their future residents and set proper expectations for family members.

Doing so will make them enjoy an excellent quality of life by offering them services that fit their exact needs and their current health conditions.

Fallbrook Assisted Living is proud to offer its services to Fremont, NE, and surrounding areas and cities: Arlington, Cedar Bluffs, Ames Nickerson, Fontanelle, Arlington, Leshara, Colon, and Hooper