Care plan Interests and Individualized Approaches instead of Problems and Interventions

There is so much institutional language around us and even more so after the medical/clinical focus of a pandemic took over. Much ground for changing institutional practices including language was lost.

Did you know? You do not have to use the ever-present institutional language? You can decide what words you will use. I encourage you to stand out and be a leader of language. It costs no money to change language either; there’s a plus.

Hopefully your computer system no longer generates the first column of a care plan to be called Problem. If it does, that’s a problem.

This set up stems from the medical care plan. Medical schooling taught to care plan medical problems, set a medical goal and then identify medical interventions to help reach that medical goal. This is no disrespect for medical professionals, it is just a truth that this style of care planning crept into long term care but it didn’t have to and it is not required by regulations.

As you know, in the world of activities/engagement/recreation/community life we do not have to fall into the trap of bowing down to the term problem. PCC got this right when they shifted to the term Focus. The word Focus is good simply because it is neutral. Problem puts everything into the box of being a problem when Identifying your life interests is not a problem!

If your system still generates the term Problem, identify this as a problem to your software system/PCC/Matrix administrator and request it be changed. And don’t let anyone tell you it cannot be changed. Of course it can. Your home pays lots of money for that system, don’t take no for an answer.

Moving on, whether your system generates the column title Problem or Focus, I recommend you then implant the term INTERESTS as that is what the regulation uses at Tag 679. I actually use the capital letters to make a point. You could also use LIFE INTERESTS. (See many past articles to learn more about this.) What a bonus we can blame it on the regulation! You could even type LIFE INTERESTS PER TAGS F636 &F679:

The term life can be blamed on Tag 636!

Then enjoy identifying a person’s (not resident’s or patient’s) life (not activity) interests.

How many of us refer to my diabetes interventions, my quality of life interventions, or my interests’ interventions?

Try it. Just for fun and to make a point. See what you think and talk about it with your team. “The interventions for my pursuit of my interests are….” Ugh. If you make yourself say it out loud, kind of like “Home sweet facility” it just proves the point that normal language is not to use interventions and not to refer to home as a facility! (See past articles on that too.)

In our lives where do we run into the term intervention? When, God forbid, a family realizes they must intervene, put an intervention in place when someone they love has an addiction. Law enforcement intervenes when something bad is happening.

I contend the word intervention is harsh, is overused, is too medical and you do not have to use it. Culture change advocates use the term approach instead. I’ve come to believe that approach is actually what we are trying to say with the term intervention because what do we mean by intervention? To do something that matches that person to help them. In other words, what approaches to take with Frank that differ from what approaches to take with Francis. And because of that, I strongly suggest using the term individualized approaches. There is power in language and every time you choose to say both words, you soften institutional culture, and you remind everyone listening that the approaches are to be individualized, not generic.

Words matter….and language has power to create a culture, which will your words create?

Carmen Bowman, MHS, Regulator turned Educator of Edu-Catering: Catering Education for Compliance and Changing Institutional Culture is an activities/engagement/community life, regulatory compliance and culture change consultant.  She offers new or not-yet-qualified activity director consultation and personalized continuing education for professionals/teams/associations. At www.edu-catering.com join The Be Encouraged Blog, Become a Leader of Normal Life with the eResource GUARDIANS OF NORMAL LIFE: How Activity/ Recreation/ Engagement/Community Life Professionals can Save the World of LTC and share with your team the eBook Individualizing Medication Administration using Regulations. At the Edu-Catering YouTube channel, see the documentary that highlights changing institutional language Life Care Center of Casper Wyoming Culture Change Video 2023.