All nursing home residents have plans of care from all care giving departments. The steps below will help you to develop activity care plans for your residents.

Interview the resident. Bring your forms to prompt you as to what information you need to gather. You will need to determine the residents physical, mental, and emotional capabilities. Go through the activities form. These are usually generic with lists of activities, hobbies, crafts, and games. Find out and check off on the form those activities which the resident gives a positive response to. You will then have to classify the activities to find out if it's something they used to do, want to do, or would like to learn to do.

Set a reasonable goal for the resident. For instance, Mr. Jones played baseball as a young man. He has had a stroke and can no longer use the left side of his body and is confined to a wheelchair. Example goal could be that Mr. Jones will catch a baseball ten times for exercise 5 times a week. Residents are usually given 3 months to reach their goals. At that time goals can be changed or renewed with fresh approaches for another 3 months.

Write 3 approaches that activity staff will use to help resident attain their goal. You can write more than 3, but never less, and they must be specific. In our example, approaches for Mr. Jones could look like this.1) Visit resident and talk to him about baseball to get him interested.2) Invite resident to toss ball for exercise.3) Transport resident to appropriate area for tossing ball.4) Toss ball gently to resident targeting his good hand.

Write weekly progress notes. Include information such as, did Mr. Jones catch the ball, how many times caught, did he enjoy the activity, does he look forward to it, talk about it, is he on his way toward reaching his goal?

Discuss your care plan during care plan meetings with other departments so they can support the resident in reaching his goal, also discuss it with the residents family to get their support also. They may have some memorabilia they can bring to keep up the residents interest.

Tip

  • If residents are comatose or unresponsive, get the information from family. Your goals could then include having the resident listen to you reading about the activity, or listening to radio, TV, or audio books related to the activity. The goal itself would be looking for some type of reaction from the resident.

Tip

  • Do not ever set a goal for a resident if the target activity is not checked off on the residents activity form as an interest past , present , or future. Date every form and all paperwork, Use six digit dates always. You must sign every form and state your position.

SHARE