Meet Ethel Praznik, our 100-year-old honorary staff member who volunteered to help stuff envelopes for the recent FlagPOST mailing.

Here’s an interesting story about Ethel’s mother and her immigration from Hungary. When her mother, Mary Timko, arrived at Ellis Island in New York, she had an eye infection and they were going to send her back to Hungary. Fortunately, her relatives were able to scrape up enough money to keep her here and heal her infection. Otherwise, she would have departed for Hungary on a ship that actually sank on its way back. Just think: Ethel and her family might never have been born, and someone else might have been formatting the FlagPOST instead of Marlyn. 😊

This month, we are also pleased to spotlight an amazing resource and friend, Lori Whitman. Lori is our accounts payable resource and provides incredible support to our therapy department. Lori just celebrated her 9th anniversary with Ensign Services in May and lives our culture to its fullest. You can see her expressions of culture and focuses during simple interactions over e-mail with a nugget typically added to her signature line, which she changes up to recognize the seasons and the holidays, as well.  

Lori has two sons and her younger son, Austin is 27 and getting married to Kayla in October this year up in Lake Arrowhead.  Austin is pursuing his Masters of Family Therapy at Cal State Long Beach, which is Lori’s alma mater.  Her older son, Ryan, is 36 and lives in Panama City, Florida. Lori’s mom lives in an IL/AL in Huntington Beach and she also spends time helping her mom and enjoying moments together. Read On...

Use meal times to your advantage! Not only can you check in on your swallowing patients, but it is a great time to address following directions, sequencing, and attention during simple functional tasks — such as adding cream and sugar to their coffee, hand hygiene, cutting up their food, etc. It is also a great time to address communication and social interactions. The facility is their home. Tasks that might not be functional for your skilled population are functional and meaningful in LTC and memory care neighborhoods — for example, deciding which snack they want, finding their room, participating in activities, and deciding when and where they will eat.

Partner up with Activities or the Chaplain. They can provide the task, but you can provide the skilled eye, environmental modifications, and dynamic cueing that allows the residents to participate in a meaningful and engaged way. Maybe your restless patient needs to be able to come and go from the area, or certain residents shouldn’t sit near each other. It could be the resident needs parallel involvement that allows them to participate but with less environmental stimuli and/or distractions.

Don’t be afraid to “hang out” in the memory care neighborhood. Using a naturalistic approach allows you to see patterns in behavior, identify triggers of agitation, find other patients to evaluate, and get to know the staff better. I also try to do my documentation there because it provides me with more time to observe and engage. Read On...

In the world of health care, there is an increased prevalence of burnout that is exacerbated by staff shortages and long days in our facilities. At Arvada Care and Rehabilitation, the acuity of our skilled hall was really high, causing extra stress for our nurses and CNAs so they were feeling really tired and needed extra support. Showing that support for one another is vital to keeping the culture positive, and that requires a full team approach. The relationship between Nursing and Therapy is so important in our facilities, and to help out our Nursing colleagues, the Therapy team saw an opportunity to show some extra love during CNA week. We went out and bought gifts to create gift bags and hand-wrote thank-you cards for the Nursing staff to pass out to them. We then communicated with them on realistic ways that Therapy would be able to assist Nursing to help the days feel easier. We received a lot of positive feedback, and the Nursing staff told us they loved the gifts and appreciated the communication. As one of our core values, loving one another is so important in our effort to make it through this difficult time in health care and to have a little fun in the process!

It started after our IDDSI diet training from the resources that sparked a full IDT discussion and from collaborating on what strategies would ensure that we roll out a successful program. This included Speech Therapy, Dietary Management, Dietary staff and Nursing staff. The best strategy we determined was establishing a consistent, reliable line of communication. The team decided the easiest and most efficient way was to establish a Tiger Text account that was set up for dietary communication only. Read On...

In a recent conference from ASHA, Rebecca Boersma, SLP of George Washington University Hospital, described a new outpatient treatment protocol to address these issues. These new patients are primarily female with a mean age of mid-40s. Recovery from these subtle but debilitating deficits does not follow the normal recovery timeline and tends to be remitting and relapsing in nature. Prominent deficits including attention, working memory, word finding, cognitive fatigue and processing speed. Read On...

Prior to acquisition in May 2017, Meadowview (formerly Midland Care Center) was struggling. The reputation in the community was poor, culture in the facility was lacking, and Therapy was contract and had a strong “us versus them” mentality. Since then, Meadowview has undergone a complete transformation. The building has been remodeled, and an 18-bed skilled unit was added with a new and improved therapy gym. Therapy moved in-house, the culture throughout the building is one of the best throughout the organization, and Meadowview is now a facility of choice in the community...It was a touching celebration and even included the ED Melissa trying her hand at ice-sculpting under the tutelage of another ED in the market that is an accomplished ice-sculptor! Congratulations, Meadowview!  Read On...

Moments of truth come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it can be a moment of truth that shines through in our normal day-to-day job duties and roles that we have. As therapists, we are constantly advocating for our residents, but sometimes this advocacy goes above and beyond others. Our PTA Buddy Eblen did that for one of our residents. Kacie came to us initially with a fracture, then developed COVID pneumonia and had a long road to recovery to return back home with her Mom and daughter. Due to all these conditions, Kacie had a slow recovery where, at times, we were not sure if she would rehab home. Buddy was the voice and champion who kept fighting for Kacie and encouraging her not to give up. He was able to consistently work with her to make the functional progress with stairs and ambulation that she needed to achieve to return home. Read On...

They were a team from day one: no ego, just respect for each other, sharing new ideas for the department and responsibilities. While Annie had completed the DORiTO program, Jesus had not, and he started in February 2022. Annie made sure Jesus was applying and doing the DORiTO lessons in real-time at the facility as they occurred. Jesus said this made a world of difference in his learning experience. Read On...

...My story is not about depression but more about resilience. Through our life experience, my wife and I became very resilient and we developed a problem-solver mindset.

Our story started in 2005 as newlyweds. My wife, Raissa, had this idea of migrating to the United States to pursue her adventure of traveling. Prior to that, I already had a stable job working as a team supervisor for a call center, and my wife was already enrolled by her parents to be a doctor. Our parents were not very hopeful that we would make it in Uncle Sam's land. But my wife and I are stubborn. Needless to say, we won that battle, as we ended up in a very small town in Guymon, Oklahoma, with a population of less than 10,000. I worked multiple jobs, from a meat packing factory QA supervisor, to Walmart department manager, to liquor store attendant, to mowing lawns and doing carpentry work on weekends while my wife worked at a small hospital as a lab medical technologist. Still in our 20s, we bought our first house in 2009 in a bigger city, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Everything was set and planned, from having a stable job to getting reliable cars and having our first home. Now we were ready to grow our family. And yes, we did. After two miscarriages, we finally had a child named Justin, and he was our bundle of joy in 2012. Sad to say “had” because the only thing that was not according to plan was having a child with a rare genetic disorder who only lived to be 18 months old. Justin was born with peroxisomal biogenesis disorder, which affects multiple systems in the body. Our little Justin suffered from frequent seizures, hypotonia, liver and kidney issues, blindness and many other health issues. He was fed through a G tube and later had a tracheostomy tube to help him breathe. Read On...

Discovery Rehab and Living in rural Salmon, Idaho, is a smaller facility in a mountainous rural setting that has been using contract therapy for years. Staffing is a large challenge and was seemingly a revolving door of therapy clinicians. Early last year, the contract company brought on a new leader. This leader demonstrated excellent drive and CAPLICO culture but without the same support from the contract therapy company that Ensign-affiliated facilities appreciate. Largely because of this leader, the facility ED Steve Lish, with cluster, market and resource assistance, decided to once again bring therapy in-house. Jolene Hugo, COTA/L, TPM, leads the Therapy team at Discovery Rehab and Living and exemplifies CAPLICO while managing the difficulties of a small rural therapy department like an all-star. Here are some of her reflections on the transition: Read On...