Interdisciplinary Collaboration: How Our Communication Models Benefit Senior Living

By Zachary Smicker, PT, DPT, GCS

Regional Director

A question I’ve heard before and I’m sure I’ll hear it again: “How is FOX so successful when it comes to providing optimal healthcare intervention to residents in senior living communities?”

That’s often followed by a series of additional questions:

Is it because your team knows the most up to date evidence-based practice?

Is it the passion and commitment you have to making sure everyone is at their optimal functional ability so that you can help older adults have a better quality of life?

Although these facets of our organization are true and necessary to our efforts in providing the best care, communication also plays a role in our success.

As most of us know, you need to have effective communication to be effective in your work.

Many of our patients are complex, ranging from having multiple diagnoses, multiple medications, multiple people involved in support, and multiple disciplines providing different interventions. It makes communication all the more important when there are so many moving pieces to take into account. That is why we at FOX places high importance on establishing an open line to all people involved in providing care to the residents to assure that the resident is cared for appropriately.

COMMUNICATION AS THE CATALYST FOR PROACTIVE CARE

In addition to having frequent communication with the rehabilitation team within FOX (physical therapy, occupation therapy, and speech-language pathology), we make sure to have a collaborative approach with nursing and wellness. We make a point to work on establishing a way to have routine communication that is effective and convenient for all involved.

One example of our operations that exemplifies this is that we set up a FOX chart on all patients with declines and medical orders for therapy with FOX.

We do this with the intention of having a proactive rather than reactive approach in addressing residents’ functional needs before anything exacerbates further.

INTEGRATING WELLNESS INTO HEALTH EDUCATION

In addition to regularly checking in with residents regarding their wellness, we also schedule in-services to provide residents with wellness education.

We believe in taking a joint approach with directors of nursing and wellness. Our collaboration considers the most beneficial in-service to give residents. This in-service for residents is intended to educate them based on their interests and their needs alike (ie, cold/flu prevention, fall reduction, reduce the risk of CVA/MI, hydration, etc.).

Again, this is an effort to be proactive rather than reactive by providing the residents with the insight of different aspects of their health to consider. This helps the residents live their life to the fullest and avoid hospital stays so they can keep doing the things they love by simply having the knowledge.

Also for residents, we make sure to arrange interdisciplinary meetings with the directors of nursing and wellness staff (and other community staff involved with patient care) on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis depending on what is best for wellness and the residents. In these meetings, we discuss the overall progress made in rehabilitation as well as concerns that may need to be further addressed beyond the noted disciplines (i.e., physician, dietician, case manager or social worker). This assures that everyone is fully aware of the action plan in place to address the needs of the resident and increase carryover – this is our work to further increase chances for success through team communication.

FOX prides itself on providing the most effective evidence-based therapy based on a proactive mentality, pure professionalism, and genuine passion for treating older adults to optimize the functional quality of life and combat ageism. In order to do this, FOX makes sure to effectively communicate with all those involved with the residents of the community. We act with a collaborative team approach that includes all those involved in residents’ care to make sure excellent care and proper attention is a nonstop assumption of our work.

While the people in this photo are a real FOX clinician and patients, they are not mentioned in this article.