The nonprofit National Private Duty Association (NPDA) and Island Home Nursing, will host a consumer education web conference on depression in older adults on Tuesday, March 13 at 5pm.

One out of three older adults suffers from major depression. Our goal is to provide information to help family caregivers increase the quality of life and identify beneficial treatment and care options for their loved ones.

The web conference topics include diagnosis of depression, association between depression, anxiety and memory loss, understnding which medications are safe and effective, along with resources and tools for monitoring treatment and improvement.

The event’s expert presenter is Steven C. Fox, D.O., Medical Director, Wellspring Personal Care. For the past 30 years, the primary focus of Dr. Fox’s clinical practice, teaching and research has been on the care and treatment for the elderly and disabled. He has been a trend-setter in the area or geriatric and Alzheimer’s care since the mid 1970’s.

Pre-registration for the event is required. Sign up today by visiting the registration link at www.privatedutyhomecare.org.

The New York Times has an article about a brilliant idea: a shoe with embedded GPS. … Hmm. Going to the company’s website, don’t see any information about where to actually buy the shoes. Typical in the elder care technology industry– a lot of promise and little action.

This TV ad is a good summary of why Washingtonians should vote against Initiative 1163.

Obama did a good thing by proposing that Medicaid be allowed to negotiate drug prices. After all, literally everyone else in the entire world, including public agencies (the VA), private health insurance, hospitals and clinics, and every single other country in the entire world, negotiates drug prices. Only Medicare, Medicaid, and the uninsured pay retail. Currently Medicare and Medicaid, in a costly gift to the drug companies, are actually prohibited by law from negotiating drug prices.

My only question is: Why only Medicaid? Why not let Medicare negotiate drug prices too?

The New York Times just ran an article on the many criminals in nursing homes. This is possible because so many states have lax criminal background check requirements. It’s not too often that I’m happy about state regulation, but this is one time I’m glad that I belong to a state that’s highly regulated. Here at Island Home Nursing, we do state criminal background checks and add FBI checks if the applicant hasn’t been in the state for several years. We repeat those checks every two years.

Use an agency with good screening procedures if possible, but regardless of who you use for in-home care, be prudent: Lock valuables away, limit access to checkbooks, protect financial information. Make it a habit so no one takes it personally. Most likely you will never need those precautions, most caregivers being incredibly honest, but it’s just ordinary prudence, like locking your house when you go on vacation.

Charlie was only slightly amused when I handed him his personal invitation to sign up with Smart Cremation. Going to their website, I see there is a discount for a couple to sign up. A little tempting, but I see they only have west coast locations right now. Who knows where we will end up, following children or the sun or affordable health care. Maybe later.

Sharon

Caring.com has a sensible list of suggestions to guide the actions of the family of someone with newly diagnosed Alzheimer’s. Read it here.

Goofy, wonderful Melanie Coleburn, Scheduler

Then on Thursday we had an IHN staff meeting. It started off in the usual way, but became a repeat of Wednesday’s meeting: smart capable interested people with dozens of creative ideas for improvements and new directions.

The take away message from both meetings:

The main thing is to make the Main Thing the main thing.

This means, among other things, not to get so involved in immediate problems that you lose sight of what’s important. So what did we decide was the “Main Thing” for Island Home Nursing?

1. Provide quality care to clients in there homes.
2. Maintain a supportive and happy work atmosphere for caregivers and office folks.

Among other things, this means we have a lot of dogs around the office these days. They make us happy, so why not?

Later–  Sharon

P. S. Thanks to David Lawrence of Family Resource Home Care, President of WAPDA, who seems to have an endless number of wise and funny sayings.

Sure, we’d all love to cure it, or prevent it, or at least postpone it for a really long time, but so far we can’t. Meanwhile, here’s a really great idea: let’s learn to help people with Alzheimer’s be safer and happier. The New York Times just had a fabulous article about this issue, Giving Alzheimer’s Patients Their Way, Even Chocolate. Here’s a great quote about a facility that has embraced new ideas like giving patients chocolate and other comfort food:

Comforting food improves behavior and mood because it sends messages they can still understand: ‘it feels good, therefore I must be in a place where I’m loved,’

There are so many good ideas here that I’m copying the article to send it to our caregivers.

Someday I want a job like my husband’s– when it snows he gets the day off to enjoy it. When you have a homecare agency, bad roads just mean you have to scramble even faster. I’ve had to hitchhike to work when my car couldn’t make it… Won’t do that again! But then there are the compensations, like falling in love with caregivers all over again. Bonnie, for example, who made Thanksgiving dinner for a client who lived down the street and carried it there in a little wagon because the roads weren’t drivable. Makes up for a lot, stories like that.