Vital Aging at Ecumen’s Parmly LifePointes Community
Just wanted to share this story done by WCCO-TV last week on the Vitalize! Wellness Centre at the Ecumen community of Parmly LifePointes in Chisago City, Minn.Curious, what other innovations are you seeing in senior living? Would love to hear about them.[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CgSfGIhFoc[/youtube]
Dying a Good Death and Dr. Mark Bowron
The other day Changing Aging featured an article written by Dr. Mark Bowron on dying and end of life care. (If you haven’t taken our poll question, please do so … it’s here.) If you’d like to hear an interview with Dr. Bowron on this subject, he’s on Minnesota Public Radio today at 10 a.m. for an hour. MPR archives all of their broadcasts, you can pull it up and listen to it later also. He’s being interviewed by Kerri Miller on Midmorning. Here’s the link.
Seeking Your Book Ideas for Our Leadership Conference
Have you read any good books recently related to leadership, change, innovation, wisdom, aging well, and spirituality and aging, or other subjects that can help us in innovation in our profession? If so, we’d love to hear the name of the book and a brief synopsis in the comments section below.At our annual Ecumen Leadership Conference, which is an annual gathering of about 500 Ecumen leaders, Borders Book Store holds a book fair. So, if you have any good suggestions that we can pass to them, please leave them here.Thanks.
Take Our Poll: Should the U.S. Have a Culture of Caring or Curing
[poll id=10']Thanks to Changing Aging reader Chuck Zimmerman for bringing a thought-provoking article written by physician Craig Bowron, a Twin Cities hospital physician. The article originally appeared in the Washington Post and appeared earlier this month in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It is entitled 'On Not Going Gently Into That Good Night.' Here are a few key excerpts from Dr. Bowron’s writing that bring us to our poll question above and a question at the very end of this post:
I’m a physician in a large hospital in Minneapolis, where I help care for patients struggling through the winter of their lives. We’ve got a lively spring unit, an obstetrical ward where fresh-faced tulips are popping up at all hours, but that’s not my specialty. As a hospitalist, I see adult patients of all ages and complexities, most of whom make good recoveries and return to life as they knew it. But taking care of the threadworn elderly, those facing an eternal winter with no green in sight, is definitely the most difficult thing I do.That’s because never before in history has it been so hard to fulfill our final earthly task: dying. It used to be that people were 'visited' by death. With nothing to fight it, we simply accepted it and grieved. Today, thanks to myriad medications and interventions that have been created to improve our health and prolong our lives, dying has become a difficult and often excruciatingly slow process … .To be clear: Everyone dies. There are no life-saving medications, only life-prolonging ones. To say that anyone chooses to die is, in most situations, a misstatement of the facts. But medical advances have created at least the façade of choice. It appears as if death has made a counteroffer and that the responsibility is now ours …If we can be honest and admit that we have no choice about dying, then the only thing we do have a say in are the circumstances. Everyone wants to grow old and die in his or her sleep, but the truth is that most of us will die in pieces. Most will be nibbled to death by piranhas, and the piranhas of senescence are wearing some very dull dentures. It can be a torturously slow process, with an undeniable end, and our instinct shouldn’t be to prolong it. If you were to walk by a Tilt-A-Whirl loaded with elderly riders and notice that all of them were dizzy to the point of vomiting, wouldn’t your instinct be to turn the ride off? Or at the very least slow it down? Mercy calls for it.This isn’t about euthanasia. It’s not about spiraling health care costs. It’s about the gift of life -- and death. It is about living life and death with dignity, and letting go.In the past, the facade of immortality was claimed by Egyptian kings, egomaniacal monarchs and run-of-the mill psychopaths. But democracy and modern medical advances have made the illusion accessible to everyone. We have to rid ourselves of this distinctly Western notion before our nation’s obesity epidemic and the surge of aging baby boomers combine to form a tsunami of infirmity that may well topple our hospital system and wash it out to sea.At some point in life, the only thing worse than dying is being kept alive.
Changing Aging readers, What Do You Think?
Wellness Center at Ecumen’s Parmly LifePointes Community to Be Featured on TV
If you’re near a TV Friday night in the Twin Cities viewing area, check out the 10 p.m. news on WCCO-TV in Minneapolis. The station is scheduled to feature Vitalize! Wellness Centre at Ecumen’s Parmly LifePointes community.
A Great Idea from Mayo Clinic for Senior Housing and Services
Building community and Building Trust: those things are at the core of what any good senior housing provider is doing.Here’s a good idea for our profession:Mayo Clinic is tapping into its customers to help it build community and share the community with the larger world. Word of mouth - It’s a lot cheaper - and more effective - than any advertising. Mayo has launched 'Sharing Mayo Clinic'Mayo treats more than 500,000 people yearly. A lot of people have very positive experiences there - and no doubt some have negative ones. Mayo’s new blog is opening the door to people to discuss both. Learn more about it from Dr. Thoralf Sundt, a heart surgeon and chair of Mayo’s marketing committee who was interviewed by the Rochester Post Bulletin:
More than 90 percent of people who comment about Mayo give praise, Sundt says, and each person with a good experience tells 40 other people about it.Now, Sundt says, 'we’re just sort of giving them the platform to share.' The blog is monitored for language and content. But, in general, Mayo wants an open forum that accepts most comments.Mayo officials also hope for suggestions about how to improve quality of service. They expect patients to share tips about how to best use time between appointments, and about Mayo services.'The quality of the experience is key,' Sundt said. (THAT STATEMENT BY DR. SUNDT IS GOLD.)
Our Pledge to You Mr. President
To Changing Aging Readers: If you have a message you’d like to leave for President Obama, please leave it in the comments section below. Thank you!
Godspeed, Mr. President.
We at Ecumen wish you all the best as you lead our country in this historically challenging time.
As we look to you and your fellow policymakers to lead positive change and transformation in Washington, D.C., we pledge to you that we will do our part to collectively drive change and innovation in aging services. At Ecumen, we envision a world in which aging is viewed and understood in radically different ways.
As you have stated, long-term economic recovery cannot be achieved without reforming entitlement programs. We will continue to advocate for long-term care financing reform that marries personal and collective responsibility to help people age and live empowered lives in communities they love. We know this country has huge obstacles, but no great opportunity has been seized without signficant hurdles. We pledge to help the communities we serve and this country rise to new heights and seize new opportunities.
We are in this together.
Martin Luther King: Transformation and Changing Aging
'We must use time creatively.'
'Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.''The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.'Martin Luther King practiced what he preached. Change. It can happen. And people are the ones who drive it.Today we honor one of this world’s greatest changemakers: Martin Luther King. Tomorrow, the first African-American first family will move into the White House - a house that was built with slave labor. America has great capacity for change and moving beyond the status quo.As Martin Luther King said, 'You don’t have to see the full staircase, just take the first step.' In 'changing aging,' we always have to remember to just take the first step.
Sandpoint Idaho Church’s Senior Housing Fosters Aging in Community
Sandpoint, Idaho is becoming known for more than its stunning natural beauty and for being the headquarters of the Coldwater Creek clothing retailer. It’s also becoming a great place to age in community' and provides a model for churches to expand intergenerational connections and ministries.You’ve heard the phrase 'age in place.' Pastor Dave Olson and the congregation of Luther Park of Sandpoint is looking at that phrase a bit more broadly. They just opened Luther Park of Sandpoint, a congregational senior housing community that is physically connected to First Lutheran Church. The new community was developed by Ecumen and is managed by Ecumen.It is designed as a 'catered living' community, so that a person can move in and simply add a la carte services as he or she needs them rather than having to relocate. It also has memory care and enhanced care services, so that the person can stay in the community when he or she needs more intensive care.Pastor Olson, in a recent interview with the Bonner County Daily Bee newspaper shared these thoughts:
'One of my goals was that this would not be an elder ghetto,' Olson said. 'Too often, our elders are separated from the rest of society. We’re overlapping our seniors with the First Lutheran Church preschool program and we’ve designed this [Luther Park] so it can be used for public events, concerts and recitals as a way to bring the community inside.'At the same time, the church community is growing as new residents move in. An indoor causeway physically connects Luther Park and the First Lutheran Church. While churches around the world wring their hands over the impact of aging congregations, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, at least, appears to see the movement as the crest of a wave, not the end of an era.'There’s a lot of research showing that, given the chance, Baby Boomers would embrace the church again,' Olson said. 'What we’ve done here is unique. There are very few senior-housing facilities where the church is attached. Instead of a service that’s held Sunday afternoons in the dining room, our residents are able to walk next door with no ice to deal with and no coats, to participate in a 'real' church service. That’s very meaningful to them.'
Luther Park: where aging is all about living.
Rep. Paul Thissen and Rep. Laura Brod Thinking Differently About Long-Term Care Financing
Kudos to two Minnesota state legislators, Rep. Laura Brod (R-New Prague) and Gubernatorial candidate Rep. Paul Thissen (D-Minneapolis) who have announced that they are introducing legislation that would create tax free savings accounts in Minnesota for long-term care. Thissen and Brod are thinking differently about long-term care:
'It’s not just about long-term care in nursing homes,' said Brod. 'We’ve got to broaden the definition of long-term care; we’re talking about long-term care in the community, personal care, whatever somebody needs on a long-term basis.'
Thissen said it an attempt to move beyond the standard model of 'forcing people to spend themselves into poverty' before becoming entirely dependent on Medicaid.'We do need to have a safety net but what’s equally important is we need people to start thinking and planning ahead and saving for their own retirement,' Representative Thissen said, 'Thinking long-term about that because that really ultimately is the solution.'
You can read the Saint Paul Pioneer Press story here and the KARE-TV story here.This bill grew out of an event Ecumen held last summer when we brought the Nebraska State Treasurer to Minnesota to share news of their long-term care savings plan.