As the Baby Boomer generation ages, many of them will spend at least some time in a long-term care facility. If you are an adult child of a nursing home resident, you may struggle to find the right time and how often your nursing home visits should be.

Adult children of elderly parents are often placed in the difficult situation of providing support for both the younger and older generations in their family. Deciding on a realistic visitation schedule to the nursing home and planning activities to enjoy together can help ease the stress for both you and your parent.

Nursing Home Visits to See Your Elderly Parent

As our parents age, it’s natural for their health to begin to deteriorate. You may notice their muscle strength or sense of balance decreasing, as well as memory issues, confusion or other signs of cognitive decline.

These deficits, especially when combined, can lead to an increased risk of injury to elderly parents who live alone. For many adult children, ensuring the safety of their parent requires the 24-hour supervision provided by a nursing home or skilled nursing facility.

If you find yourself in this situation, you may struggle with deciding how often to visit your elderly parent, as well as what to do during these visits. While there is no one right answer for everybody, the following tips can help you choose an appropriate schedule and make the most of your visitation time.

How Often Should You Visit?

Deciding how often to visit a parent in a long-term care facility is often complicated by a myriad of factors. While you may think going as often as possible is best, consider making fewer visits that are of higher quality.

For example, going every day for a few short minutes may not provide as much emotional support as devoting one or two hours a few days each week. Be sure to work out a schedule with the skilled nursing facility staff to avoid disrupting appointments with doctors, social activities or rehabilitation sessions.

Suggestions from Senatobia: Adult children often feel like they have to take on the entire responsibility of making nursing home visits. To avoid feeling overwhelmed, try enlisting the help of family members and friends of your elderly parents. Sharing the responsibility helps to ease your burden, and visits from a variety of friendly faces is a great way to keep your parent’s spirits up.

What Time Should You Visit?

While checking with the staff is always recommended, in general mid-mornings or mid-afternoons typically have fewer scheduled activities for nursing home residents. That does not mean, however, that you need to go at the same time every visit. Senior care experts recommend visiting on different days and at different times.

Varying your visits allows you to become a more effective patient advocate for your elderly parent, too. Skilled nursing staff, rehabilitation specialists and physicians may see your parent at different times throughout the week. Talking with several of them will give you a better sense of the quality and appropriateness of the care your parent receives.

How Long Should You Visit? 

Like the other choices we’ve discussed, deciding how long you should spend visiting your elderly parent will depend on your exact situation. Again, simply staying as long as possible is not as important as spending quality time together.

If you live close to the nursing home and can visit regularly, spending an hour together every few days may be right for you. If your nursing home visits require traveling a long distance, spending two or three hours together once a week may be a better option.

What Should You Do During a Visit?

Before you arrive, take a moment to consider the activities your parent may enjoy. For example, check with the nursing home staff to make arrangements to eat lunch or dinner together. Joining your elderly parent during one of the skilled nursing facility’s social activities is another great way to spend quality time.

Bringing a gift like a photo album may spur your parent to reminisce and engage in a heart-felt discussion. If your parent is able to walk or get into a wheel chair, consider having them give you a tour of the facility or grounds. For parents with mobility issues, try playing cards or board games, reading to them or watching a favorite movie or TV show together.

No matter how you spend your time during a nursing home visit, remember that your visit makes a big difference to their emotional and physical health.

Why Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab?

At Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab, we treat your loved ones the way you would want to be treated. Our knowledgeable and experienced healthcare team members have a commitment to providing compassionate care. Owned and operated by the same family since 1978, our award-winning skilled nursing facility provides both short- and long-term healthcare and rehabilitation services. We do this in a homelike environment and family-type atmosphere. Consider us when your mother or father need special care in the Senatobia, Mississippi, area.

While flowers and plants are thoughtful gifts for elderly parents staying in a skilled nursing facility, eventually your mom’s or dad’s room may begin to look like a greenhouse. If you’d like to give a more meaningful or practical gifts for elderly parents, try one of the following suggestions.

Gifts for Elderly Parents in a Skilled Nursing Facility

We know how hard it can be to see your parents lose functionality due to an age-related injury, illness or chronic medical condition. In many cases, recovering from these conditions requires spending time in a skilled nursing facility.

While our entire staff at Senatobia is dedicated to providing outstanding medical care to our residents, knowing that friends and family are thinking of them can help make the patient’s recovery process easier. To show your loved ones they are in your thoughts, consider giving them one of these gifts during their stay.

Family Photos

Picking up a few picture frames to fill with photos of their spouse, children, grandchildren and other loved ones is always a thoughtful gift. For sharing larger numbers of photos, try creating a scrapbook of your favorite shots. There are also several websites that allow you to upload photographs and create custom-printed photo books. Electronic photo frames that allow you to add favorite family photos digitally are another great option. The frame will cycle through the photos automatically, showing off the familiar faces of loved ones throughout the day.

Wireless Headphones

Wireless headphones allow our residents to listen to music, audio books or the TV at a comfortable volume — even during quiet hours. Whether your parent suffers from hearing loss or shares a room, they can turn up the sound and enjoy their favorite shows without disturbing those around them.

Bathrobes, Slippers or Blanket

As we age our circulation becomes less efficient, which can leave your elderly mom or dad feeling cold. Bringing them a favorite bathrobe, comfortable slippers with non-skid soles or a nice soft blanket can help keep them warm and cozy. Be sure to label these items with your parent’s name to keep them from getting lost!

Personal Toiletry Items

When staying at a rehabilitation center, having the simple comforts of home can make a real difference for an elderly parent. A gift basket filled with trial sized items of their favorite brands of tissues, lip balm, lotion, toothpaste or mouthwash is a great way to help them feel at home.

Your Time

Of course, the best gift you can give your mom or dad is a nice, long visit. Spending time with their children, no matter what their age, is especially important to parents while they are away from their own home.

Taking the time to talk, eat a meal or play a game together helps to alleviate the loneliness of staying somewhere besides your own home. In general, the more frequently you can stop in, the better.

More Ideas for Gifts for Elderly Parents

Check out a few of these shopping websites to order gift such as puzzles, word games, light weights, stretch bands, books, music and more:

• Silverts has provided comfortable clothing and shoes for more than 80 years.
• Products at the Senior Store run the gamut from games to large print books.
• Parent Giving offers a wide selection of safety and assistive devices as well as home care, health care and nutrition products.
• Buck & Buck has clothing for seniors, plus products designed to help with problems related to Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, incontinence, arthritis, and paralysis. Be sure to ask about their free labeling service for clothing!

Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab Offers Compassionate Care to Your Loved Ones!

Our award-winning skilled nursing facility offers both excellent short-term and long-term healthcare in the Senatobia, Mississippi area. Our facility has been owned and operated by the same family since 1978. When your loved one needs physical, speech or occupational therapy, call our compassionate and professional team for help.

Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab launched the Dreamcatcher Program to identify the unfulfilled dreams of the center’s nursing home residents.

Dreams Do Come True

When she was a little girl Kathleen Toliver would sit in her mother’s front yard and sing and sing and sing.

“We sang up every song we ever knew,” recalled the 83-year-old Toliver.

Now a nursing home resident at Senatobia Healthcare and Rehab, Toliver finally recorded an album all her own, thanks to the newly created Dreamcatcher program. Senatobia launched Dreamcatcher to identify the unfulfilled dreams of the center’s nursing home residents. The center then matches them up with local residents or local organizations to help make their dreams become a reality.

Toliver worked with Hernando, Miss., music recording studio operator Danny Childress. They cut some of her honky-tonk favorites, including William “Lefty” Orville Frizzell’s “Long Black Veil,” and Tom T. Hall’s “Washed My Face in the Morning Dew.”

Toliver admitted she liked their songs, and added: “I like old dogs and children and watermelon wine.”

Dreamcather Team Lines Up Music Recording

Toliver entered the Senatobia nursing home center in March 2017 and lives there today.

The Senatobia Dreamcatcher Team heard about her dream request and went right to work. The community quickly rallied together to line things up.

Senatobia Director of Nursing Tawnya Pionk coordinated with the Dreamcatcher program and contacted Childress who agreed to record Toliver. Within no time, Tolliver entered the booth and belted out some tunes “just like the good old days.”

“She did great,” Childress said. “I was more than happy to help make her dream come true.”

“I wasn’t nervous at all,” Toliver added.

‘Gold Record’ Earned

As a memento from her recording experience, Toliver received a framed copy of her “Gold Record” that she and all of her fans can admire.

“We’re excited to have our very own celebrity with us,” said Mark Tuggle, Senatobia’s executive director. “We’re also pleased to launch our Dreamcatcher program and thrilled that the community has embraced this so quickly. We can’t wait for the next dream to come true.”

Senatobia Center Looks Forward to Making Your Loved One’s Life-long Dreams a Reality

Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab is a 106-bed fully certified Medicare and Medicaid center offering excellent long-term care and post-acute short-term rehabilitation care services to skilled nursing center patients and residents in Tate County and surrounding counties. Contact our Baldridge Award-winning facility to take a tour and find out if this is the right place for your loved one.

Many of us take communication for granted. But for those who suffer from a stroke, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injuries or other disorders, this can be a frustrating task. Thanks to the help of speech-language pathologists and hard work on the patients’ part, many of our patients see dramatic improvements in their speech, language and hearing issues.

Speech-Language Pathologists Make a Big Difference in Our Patients’ Lives

Imagine, for a moment, being unable to communicate your wishes. For many of our patients at Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab, this is a frustrating reality. Articulation and language issues caused by disease, injury or other disabilities can make being understood a real challenge.

Thankfully, we have a talented and dedicated team of speech-language pathologists who employ creative and individualized treatments for our growing senior population. Working through — and eventually overcoming — these speech or language impairments is the end goal they work towards each day.

The Speech Heroes at Our Facility

During the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s (ASHA) Better Hearing & Speech Month, we want to honor and recognize our speech therapists for the care they provide.

Our speech-language pathologists at Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab assess, diagnose, treat, and help prevent communication and swallowing disorders in our patients. These heroes pour their hearts every day into:

• Helping people who have lost language skills to produce words and basic sentences, learn to answer simple questions and participate in social activities.
• Teaching memory strategies to assist grandparents with remembering the names of their grandchildren.
• Rehabilitating a patient’s swallowing muscles so they can enjoy their favorite beverages.
• Helping deaf patients with new cochlear implants to speak words after a lifetime of using sign language.
• Easing a patient’s anxiety to help eliminate stuttering when speaking in front of groups.
• Showing tracheostomy patients how to apply a Passy-Muir valve so they can use their own voice to tell family members, “I love you.”
• Conducting difficult meetings with patient’s families to inform them that their loved one’s cognitive impairments make it unsafe for them to live alone.
• Practicing pronunciation exercises so a patient’s needs can be understood.
• Helping patients work through the emotions that arise when they are misunderstood or overlooked.
• Teaching patients how to use a speech-generating device to live a productive and fulfilling life after a stroke.
• Spending their own time and their own money on solutions to help their patients in even a small way.

Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab Thanks Our Speech-Language Pathologists for Their Compassionate Care

We may not express it often enough, but during this Better Hearing & Speech Month we want to thank each member of our speech-language pathologist team. We are grateful for the difference you make each day in our patient’s lives. Thank you!

If you would like your loved one to experience our passionate and caring healthcare or rehabilitation services in Senatobia, Mississippi, please contact us.

 

Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab has been recognized as a 2017 recipient of the Bronze – Commitment to Quality Award for its dedication to improving the lives of residents through quality care. The award is the first of three progressive award levels through the National Quality Award Program.  The American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) sponsor the Quality Award Program.  AHCA/NCAL is the leading association for long term and post-acute care. The program honors AHCA members that have shown their commitment to improving quality of care for their residents.

“It’s an honor to be recognized for our commitment to delivering quality care,” said Donnie Blunt, Administrator of Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab. “Going through the process for the Bronze award has made our organization stronger.”

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program provides the core values and criteria for the National Quality Award Program. The Baldrige program helps organizations in different business sectors improve and achieve performance excellence.

The Award Program has three levels: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Healthcare providers begin the quality improvement process at the Bronze level, where they develop an organizational profile.  First, this profile contains performance elements such as the facility vision. A vision statement is also required in the profile.  Finally, the organizational profile must outline the key facility strengths and challenges. Most noteworthy, Bronze applicants must to implement a performance improvement system resulting in improved resident care. Trained Examiners review each Bronze application to determine if the center has met the demands of the criteria. As a recipient of the Bronze – Commitment to Quality Award, Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab may now move forward in developing approaches and achieving performance levels that meet the Silver – Achievement in Quality Award criteria.

“I commend Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab for embarking on the journey to quality improvement,” said the AHCA/NCAL National Quality Award Board of Overseers Chair Alana Wolfe. “I encourage Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab to continue to build on the strong foundation it has created.”

Senatobia Healthcare & Rehab will receive the award during AHCA/NCAL’s 68th Annual Convention and Exposition in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 15-18, 2017.

The facility has been renovated several times over the years and we are in the process of a major renovation project now. We also recently added new state of the art therapy equipment that will help produce better outcomes for our residents that will need physical, occupational or speech therapy.

New private rooms available!

NEW 1800 square foot building addition for therapy:
Our NEW therapy building is state of the art with a fully functioning kitchen and bathroom , so patients can practice Activities of Daily Living with a ” hands on” approach.

Come take a tour today! Contact Senatobia Healthcare And Rehab Center at 662-562-5664