October 2007 E-Zine LTC Newsletter
October 2007 E-Zine LTC Newsletter
Dear LTC Professional,
Please enjoy this
complimentary monthly issue of the SWK Consulting E-Zine Newsletter. Each
month we share bits and pieces of information on personal growth,
professionalism, regulatory issues in conjunction with risk management.
Personal Growth
Moments
What kind of a job is your consultant doing?
A recent conversation with a Director of Nursing inspired me to look at how we function as nursing home consultants. "Corporate Consultant" was a curse word to this dedicated professional.
Past experience had left her with a bitter taste and the memory of belittlement and embarrassment that been inflicted upon her in a public manner by the corporate elite.
She described the all to common practices of the consultant showing up, spending most of the time on the telephone, taking charts to the conference room and sequestering there for a couple of hours, and then emerging to trumpet the bad news. Then she would be charged to "fix it and when I come back tell me what you did".
Most of us at one time or another has been left feeling defensive and inept by someone that may have known more than us, but was unwilling or unable to share information, support, or assistance. The very thing that we need to help us grow and succeed is withheld and we are left to learn only by hard knocks.
Perhaps a consultant should aspire to include these things:
1. Interact with staff, residents, and families to learn of their experience.
2. Perform hands on education during a teaching moment.
3. Validate that your staff is actually doing what they say they did.
4. Doing walking compliance rounds
5. Quietly observe at the nurses station while doing chart review.
6. Attend a staff meeting and maybe a QI meeting.
7. Support nursing management by sharing information, offering potential solutions, and promoting effective QI.
8. Teach staff about surveyor perspective on environmental triggers i.e. what is observed, why it is a problem, how to correct, and how to respond if a surveyor would observe a similar situation.
9. Be proactive instead of reactive. Find problems before a surveyor finds them.
10. Be in your building enough to make a difference.
If we want to make a difference in the integrity and image of our industry, we need to start with ourselves, and show each other a little compassion.