Planning and scheduling activities are an important part of providing person-centered care in your care home. However, things may not always go as planned. You may put a great deal of effort into planning activities only to see no participation from the residents.
To make sure that your efforts are not wasted, follow these steps to encourage activities and help the residents maintain good physical and mental health:
1) Focus on residents’ interest
One of the best ways to encourage residents’ participation is to plan activities that are based on their interests. To get started with this, find the common interest areas and create resident groups accordingly. For example, if a group of residents enjoys gardening, plan garden-based activities such as growing fruits and flowers, watering plants, and raking leaves.
Often, planning and scheduling care home activities are challenging for the care staff due to time constraints. Care home staff members have to do a myriad of tasks – and one of them is managing and administering medication. Manual tasks such as transcribing new prescriptions, double-checking, and counting medications take up a lot of time. These processes can be automated using electronic MAR and care workers can save time to focus more on planning activities. Learn how electronic MAR can work for your care home at https://www.electronicmar.co.uk/emar/.
2) Involve them in activity planning sessions
When planning new activities or arranging activity schedules, care staff can encourage the residents to be a part of the tasks. Doing this can help the residents develop a sense of belonging to the activity groups. Asking residents for their inputs can also encourage them to socialize with each other. By taking ideas from the residents, the care staff can add more variations in care activities.
3) Invite family members for participation
Another simple way to encourage activity participation is to invite residents’ family members to the activity sessions. The involvement of family members means more confidence in residents to participate in the activities.
Encouraging family involvement can help new residents feel more comfortable in participating in the activities and interacting with others. Also, family members can contribute to activity planning and lend a helping hand in managing weekly or monthly activity sessions.
4) Include rewards
No activity or task is intriguing if there are no rewards. Include rewards such as food treats and family time to make the activities more alluring and encourage participation amongst the residents.
However, remember to go easy with the activities and do not make them overwhelming for the residents. The residents may not necessarily complete the tasks that are a part of the activities. Be flexible to allow them to continue the next day/week from where they left off.
Learn how you can improve care quality with the electronic medication administration system
Safe and accurate medication administration is an important part of care quality. Find out how your care home can reduce medication administration errors. Book an eMAR demo with us today.
