Empowered
Teams

Team meetings are held daily for team members from varying disciplines caring for residents.

All residents have a team member assigned to them to serve as a “troubleshooter.” Assigned team members are responsible for 1 or 2 residents ensuring ongoing coordination of care and services across teams/ departments, and response to residents’ needs, preferences, and requests.

Learning Circles are used routinely in team and resident meetings in order to give each person the opportunity to share their opinion/ideas.

Community Meetings are held on a routine basis, at least weekly, inviting residents team members and families to gather as a community. The community decides together on content, such as inviting new residents and new team members to introduce themselves, celebrating life events, solving problems, planning future events, reviewing policies.

High level leaders such as CEO, owners, and board members actively support the culture change philosophy, committee, projects, etc.; providing commitment and resources, and receiving progress updates.

The community has a standing culture change task force/committee/team with a broad representation of residents/family members, supervisory and direct care team members from various shifts, administration, and nursing leadership.

Direct care team members provide support to the same residents every time they work (no planned rotation).

Direct care team members work together to decide who works when and how to cover absences for call-offs (self-scheduling).

All performance evaluations include a category for support of resident-directed living.

The community welcomes and encourages team members to dine with residents.

Team members wear clothes that support a community environment (as opposed to scrubs).

The community uses non-institutional language in all documents (clinical charting, job descriptions, policies and procedures) and verbal interactions, and provides periodic training to all team members to remove institutional language.*