Courage is contagious
Facility staff have no idea if catching COVID-19 will be merely an annoyance or a life-threatening battle, a parking ticket or a death sentence. But still, they go.
Things I Think by Gary Tetz
Bad news on the doorstep
Compared to shoppers tearing apart a pallet of toilet paper, our facility staff have been Buddhas in scrubs during the recent pandemic. But even they aren’t the most inspiring out of all of this.
Face touching for dummies
Can you remember a public health directive than “don’t touch your face” that’s ever been more simple, clear and science-based, yet more difficult to execute? I can’t.
Love in the air
Love was in the air this Valentine’s Day, and in the days before and after. Let me tell you the ways.
Tempets in a typo
Sometimes a writer has to take a principled stand no matter how oxymoronic that might sound. That’s why today, without fear of reprisal, I want to talk about typos.
An insomniac’s medicine cabinet
Wakeful, wandering, grumpy and doomed. These precious words describe our faithful, bleary-eyed columnist most nights.
This year, stop wandering about!
If you didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions, you better be prepared to explain why.
Seniors — more than shadows of former glories
It would be one of those sympathy shows, I figured, the kind where you go home acknowledging the performer more as a historical artifact than as a still-vigorous artist. “How good could she really be at this age?” I even caught myself wondering.
Escape from Emojiland
The growing use of a lazy trend in text communications makes me weep for the future of real compassion and empathy.
Achieving best practice in a data-driven birthday environment
That’s right, it’s my birthday. I’ll pause just long enough for you to feel bad about not yet wishing me a happy one.
The rats are coming! The rats are coming!
Our long-term care facilities are apparently under ongoing attack, and we desperately need a hero.
Embracing the journey in a Red Zone world
Call it a blessing or a curse, but give me a life experience, and I’ll connect it to long-term care in 300 words, or your money back.
Happy PDPM Day!
It might be best to start creating some ground rules for how we’ll be observing PDPM Day in the future.
Tickle me, Earmo
Resist the urge to rush outside and attach jumper cables to your earlobes — for now.
Never too late to be undermined
Once again, science has undermined the foundation on which another of my excuses is built.
A gentle slap on the wrist
I choose to believe I have friends, and chatted with one of them recently in the lobby of a nursing home. I felt the conversation was going extremely well. I listened attentively, and contributed interesting nuggets and wry witticisms on various long-term care topics. Every non-verbal body language signal she sent supported my perception of…
Better than bees in your eye
Those adorable flying insects buzzing around and bringing cheer to your long-term care facility right now? A new study reveals that they’re probably infested with and spreading terrifying superbugs.
Murder, they spoke
Like a real-crime podcast about murder. That’s the way we need to tell the story of our long-term care staffing or funding woes if we want anyone to actually pay attention.
Privacy for All
We hear a lot about Medicare for All. How about if we start with Privacy for All, and see how that goes first?
My high-sodium epiphany
In long-term care, we deal with the unexpected all the time. Many of the people we serve are there because something unanticipated happened, crashing into their lives like a no-warning tsunami — or a tamari bottle falling from the sky.
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