How does your facility welcome new residents and their loved ones?

Specialties Geriatric

Published

I work in a very small LTC facility, am a new nurse, and would like to know what are the "special welcoming" things you do to make a resident and/or his family feel safe and like they actually made the right choice by choosing your facility. Lately, I have had a few late afternoon/early evening admits that happened when pretty much social services and others are gone. I was sooooo busy with passing meds and getting assessment done that I felt like I was ignoring their emotional needs. There are generally only 2 nurses and 3 aides on our PM sift, and it is difficult when new admit comes. Last time, I felt so horrible for the family and the resident who was afraid ...and angry to say the least. I don't mean things like teddy bears and things, I mean emotionally --what do you do/say to put at ease? I feel like my facility gets a big fat F for this.......what say all of you?

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Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

We try to have someone...anyone....welcome the new person and escort them to their room. We all hate evening admissions but that is the way the hospitals are running these days. Do you have a supervisor on your shift? If they know an admission is coming they could be standing by ready to do the meet and greet.

We spend a lot of time on customer service. I know the nurses are super busy but put yourself in the patient's shoes....they have been bounced from home to the hospital to the (dreaded) nursing home. They are often scared, hungry, and in pain. A few minutes of your undivided time goes a long way. You know what they say about first impressions....if you spend a few minutes right away at the beginning of their stay, chances are the rest of their stay will go smoothly.

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Could you do a welcome basket? Off the top of my head: grippy socks, hard candy, earplugs, sleep mask?

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Specializes in LTC,Hospice/palliative care,acute care.

Admissions escorts them to the unit, one of us introduces ourselves to them all and then I always quietly ask if the person needs to go to the bathroom and take them myself (good time to gather some assessment info) and then I offer them all a drink before taking them to the room, orienting the resident to same and then explaining the admission process to all. Then the family usually goes to the social worker's office and leaves their loved on the unit for an hour or so to do the financial stuff and this allows us to get our assessment done and complete the rest of our admission process. I've learned that in such a stressful time these family members seem to retain a lot less of the info we give them then we would expect. It helps to repeat the basics a few times. We will soon be giving a welcome basket and the activities dept is going to assign someone to each new admit for a few hours when they are admitted.

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we find out what their favorite meal is and our administrator goes out to a restaurant and gets it

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