Having just returned from Australia, I'll be devoting several upcoming blogs to my research and fact finding with how Australia is advancing in aging and dementia care, as well as dementia and age friendly best practices. I found their award wages for aged care workers to be one significant difference from the US and worthy of discussion.
As my mother's Parkinson's Disease progressed, it was very apparent that food and the mealtime experience became more important to her. So much so, that I remember saying "Mom's still finds joy in yummy food". That said, her "yummy" was not always the healthiest, but we wanted her to be happy. We knew that healthy foods were important, but probably not as important as the joy of witnessing her with excitement dig in to a chocolate fudge sundae with extra whipped cream. Now THAT was a quality dining experience!
As bankers and financial advisors we must develop systems, policies and facilities that meet the every changing needs of people living with dementia, allowing independence to access and manage their money without fear of financial abuse. Creating a dementia friendly bank will require training, education - and looking at their world through a different lens.
I have always been a proponent that if something is just not working well, shifting gears may be a solution. Let's face it - everything is changing fast these days, so much so that it seems as if technology leads the pack in shifting gears at every juncture of our daily lives.
The increasing diversity of the U.S. and other nations offers opportunities and challenges for senior care care providers, health care systems, and policy makers to create and deliver services to culturally diverse patients and to train and increasingly culturally diverse workforce. Cultural competence refers to an ability to interact effectively with people of different cultures. Cultural competence comprises four components: (a) awareness of one's own cultural worldview, (b) attitude towards cultural differences, (c) knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews, and (d) cross-cultural skills. Developing cultural competence through training can result in a better ability to understand, communicate with, and effectively interact with people across cultures and can lead to a 15% decrease in miscommunication. In senior care, this communications training can significantly improve outcomes, especially in caring for those with dementias, chronic illness, pain and at end-of-life.
I was very fortunate, for when my sweet mom passed, no one else asked for "the teapot". It wasn't particularly pretty, and certainly of no monetary value. But to me it was priceless reminder of the tender moments we had together to talk about an endless number of topics that mothers and daughters share. Often accompanied by a scrumptious homemade sweet, we always had back-up favorites in the freezer so we were never without an accompaniment for our favorite Bigelows "Constant Comment". When we weren't chatting and sipping, we would often play a quick game of Yahtzee, Gin Rummy or in latter years, our absolute favorite go- to game, Rumikub.
We all like to think that have compassion for others don't we? After all, we give care, so we must have empathy. Is there a difference between caring and true compassion?
