Friday evenings in our house have a general theme as we transition into the weekend.

Lots of kids, our own and their buddies, neighbors, food and at the start of the evening, LOUD music.

Emmy, age 5, typically starts us off with some form of Taylor Swift tune. A pack of kids will then bebop around the house with a speaker blaring in hand.  Lately, the top of her list is “You need to calm down.”

Honestly, the theme is something we all could learn from leading into October.

If you read or listen to the lyrics, you see messaging around person-centeredness, acceptance, and understanding. 

Sound familiar?

We have patients, individuals, family members and loved ones who are depending on us to make a fluid transition into a new era.

We are going to figure out admission dx … you need to calm down.

Therapy and nursing teams are going to collaborate to obtain MDS information for key clinical areas … you need to calm down.

We may have a learning curve initially to obtain all clinical complexities and comorbidities- we will learn to get it right- we can all calm down.

We may even stumble with electronic medical record integrations, submissions and customizations — again, we will make refinements — we can all calm down.

If we look at how “person-centered care” is defined, we’ve totally got this! We are serving individuals. We can all calm down.

Person-centered care promotes the importance of keeping the person at the center of the care planning and decision-making process. It promotes choice, purpose and meaning in daily life

With person-centered care, nursing home residents are supported in achieving the highest level of physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being that is individually practical.In addition, the staff places a premium on active listening and observing, so staff can adapt to each resident’s changing needs, regardless of cognitive abilities.

The active listening portion of this definition is a portion that speaks to me. 

Are we listening or truly engaging in active listening?

Active Listening is a special way of reflecting back what the other person has expressed to let him/her know you are listening and to check your understanding of his/her meaning. Active listening is a restatement of the other person’s communication, both the words and the accompanying feelings, i.e., nonverbal cues — tone of voice, facial expression, body posture.

For example, stating goals together with your patient/person during plan of care (POC) development and discussing needed updates and progress during completion of progress reports.

Another key piece of this definition is the idea of what is Individually Practical for each patient/person.

Not my goals — not the family’s goals — but goals that are individualized and practical for the person.

When we consider the structure of the Patient-Driven Payment Model, we have many key considerations nicely built into the model. They include: diagnostic category, complexities/co-morbidities, and functional status. Furthermore, QRP future regulation guides us to safe and effective discharge planning, to a lesser level of care and measurement between baseline and end of care status for self-care and mobility areas.

See? We all need to calm down.  We’ve got this. 

As I mentioned in opening, our Fridays only start loud. From there, they calm down. Late in the evening, you can find a pile of kiddos watching the latest movie release on the couch and parents that transition from tolerating the latest in pop music to Dads picking on guitars on the porch. 

A little “Free Fallin” or “Won’t Back Down,” typically closing with “Country Roads” … something peaceful to help us all calm down.

Renee Kinder, MS, CCC-SLP, RAC-CT, is Vice President of Clinical Services for Encore Rehabilitation and 2019 APEX Award of Excellence winner in Writing–Regular Departments & Columns category. Additionally, she serves as Gerontology Professional Development Manager for the American Speech Language Hearing Association’s (ASHA) gerontology special interest group, is a member of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine community faculty, and is an advisor to the American Medical Association’s Relative Value Update Committee (RUC) Health Care Professionals Advisory Committee (HCPAC).