Tuesday, December 29, 2009

care facility calendar

Visits and outings are functions of time to those on the outside of a care facility. They may be perceived quite differently to those who reside in a care facility where time often moves at a different pace.

With New Year’s comes an annual focus on calendars. We use oversized wall calendars, 30” high X 20” wide (76cm high X 51cm wide) both in Patti’s room at her care facility and at home in our kitchen.

The calendar in Patti’s room serves double duty allowing visitors to sign in and staff shifts to get a better picture of Patti’s world. Additionally the wall calendar helps to supplement Patti’s Multiple Sclerosis related memory loss.

More importantly to me is that the wall calendar at home dramatically tracks 'care time'. It is too easy to allow day to day life to swallow up your time. When it is in your face every time you enter the kitchen you are less apt to forget to make time for an outing or a visit.


December was a good example. In spite of three snowstorms, holiday shopping, busier work schedule, stranded away from home for two nights following a car accident, and oodles of time associated with that I was still able to average 4 nights per week of outings with Patti and getting her ready for and into bed at her care facility myself. My usual average is 4.5 nights per week.

Believe me that kitchen wall calendar in my face makes the difference time after time. There are so many days when considering my ‘to do’ schedule that I glance at it and realize I must revise my schedule because I MUST work an outing into ‘this day’ to keep my weekly goal.

In the care facility era it is simply too easy to get distracted, you MUST keep ‘care time’ in your face not just your heart and thoughts.

Caregivingly Yours, Patrick Leer
web site: http://caregivinglyyours.com/
videos: http://www.youtube.com/daddyleer

2 comments:

  1. and then of course, one must know what the codes are that are used for the calendar to keep track of events and lifes (the snowmen were cute :)

    I can see how easy it would be without a calendar to "let" care giving slide in the midst of other priorities going on. Seeing things on paper gives one a perspective to keep things in balance

    Happy New Year :)

    betty

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  2. Patrick - we are lost without our wall calendar. We have an erasable one that we set up every month for the family and everything goes on it. Our kids don't always understand the point of putting their schedules on it, since they are of the teenage persuasion, but they get the point every time they get parked into the driveway!

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