Abilities Care Success: Making the SNF Feel Like Home

By Rachel Young, Director of Rehabilitation, Tri State Health & Rehabilitation, Harrogate, TN

Tri-State Health and Rehabilitation Center in Harrogate, Tennessee, has been working hard to integrate the Abilities Care Approach into the daily life of LTC residents. Miriam Janoyan, OTR/L, and Bethany Evans, SLP, have completed baseline cognitive assessments on all LTC residents and created both a storyboard and a license plate for each of them to communicate their wants and needs to staff and reduce risk for behaviors.

Success with the program was shown in particular with one resident, a former member of the U.S. Navy, who had been having a difficult time orienting to the building, and it was causing increased behaviors due to frustration. Miriam and Bethany created bright colored signs and labels to mark the hallways and his room to improve the resident’s independence with finding the appropriate path to and from needed areas, including the dining room, activities room, and his personal room.

Through the Abilities Care Program, Miriam and Bethany also discovered that this resident loved sitting on his front porch at home, so they brought him a chair to set outside his room so he could observe his “neighbors.” He is now ambulating freely throughout the building, is able to find his room, and enjoys sitting on his front porch daily with a reduction in behaviors. We are so grateful for their hard work in implementing the Abilities Care Approach here in East Tennessee!