What is Assisted Living?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaassisted living residences or assisted living facilities (ALFs) provide supervision or assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs); coordination of services by outside health care providers; and monitoring of resident activities to help to ensure their health, safety, and well-being. Assistance may include the administration or supervision of medication, or personal care services provided by a trained staff person. Assisted living as it exists today emerged in the 1990's as an eldercare alternative on the continuum of care for people, normally seniors, who cannot live independently in a private residence, but who do not need the 24-hour medical care provided by a nursing home. Assisted living is a philosophy of care and services promoting independence and dignity.My Notes: Assisted living was based on a resident centered model instead of a traditional medical model. The idea is to bring the services to the resident instead of moving a resident around to make it easier for the medical staff. Think of how women deliver now - instead of going to the holding room than the birthing room, then the recovery room - all of the services are done in one room, making it a much better experience - same idea for assisted living.Bring the services to the resident. Allow the resident to dictate their schedule. They can decide when to wake up so if they were always a late sleeper (that's me!) then they can continue to be a late sleeper instead of being woken up early so that the staff can get everyone fed by 8 am and move on to their next chore.Another example: Allowing the resident to dictate when and how they bathe. Maybe they always preferred baths over showers. Certainly its easier just to do a shower, but if they want to take a bath and they want lavender bubble bath in there - so be it.Also note, its a resident, not a patient.And yes, that is a real resident in a real assisted living property that I work with and those are both of his dogs who live with him there!More notes soon...