Love may be a many splendored thing, but it can also be elusive, at least in my experience. So when I read in McKnight’s about new “love meter” technology now available, my mind whirled with possibilities. 

Starting with, sign me up! 

This new monitoring tool gives an isolation score to seniors, based on such things as how many visits someone gets or how often they engage in social activities. 

Exactly what I need. I’m essentially a senior, according to my movie discount and the Denny’s menu. I’m isolated. I don’t get many visits. I need this in my apartment. 

The “love meter” software then flags those who are lonely and socially disconnected, and tries to match them with a network of volunteers who share similar interests.

Perfect. I’ll just stay home from work today, start a pot of tea, and wait for my volunteer to show up. 

What? I don’t qualify? This is only for long-term care residents and providers? Seriously? I can suddenly feel my “love meter” score plummeting in disappointment.

In talking with CNAs and nurses over the years, nothing seems to tear their hearts out more than seeing the toll isolation takes on residents without apparent friends or family. Loneliness in our profession can be as deadly as any medical condition, and anything that helps fight it should be commended and embraced. 

In society at large, Valentine’s Day is perhaps that moment each year when loneliness comes most clearly into focus — when folks with love in their lives feel the most pressure to receive and express it, and folks without it feel the absence most deeply. For a resident without much human connection outside the facility, it can be devastating.

Thankfully, providers and their activity directors tend to step up on Feb. 14, with events and activities designed to communicate affection and help ease the melancholy. And on a national level, Wish of a Lifetime from AARP has created Cupid Crew, where volunteers walk facility hallways and distribute roses and cards to isolated seniors. 

I saw the power of that program myself this year, and it was both heartwarming and heartrending. The interactions between residents and flower-bearers, which included children and community members, were endlessly moving and delightful. But it was just one day of 365, and the return to loneliness that inevitably followed is a sad reality to ponder.

For providers, filling that daily void in any way possible should always be a top-priority mission, but it’s something that can never be achieved by staff alone. That’s what I like most about the “love meter” idea. It leverages staff and technology to identify those most vulnerable, but crowdsources the human connections that need to follow. It’s a great model for mitigating a problem in which we all should share. 

“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty,” said Mother Teresa. It takes all of us stepping up together, and motivating and engaging those outside our facilities and profession to join us in fighting it. 

That means utilizing every possible tool and innovation, including the “love meter” — and then going far beyond.

Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers worldwide since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare Services in Portland, OR.

The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.

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