Page 17 - Food For Thought workshop

Honoring Choice & Shifting Professional Control to Support Self-directed Living: Tip Sheet
Supporting people with impaired decision making to make choices
• Has the resident been adjudged incompetent? If so,
o Are food preferences documented e.g. in a living will or other document?
o Can the legal representative share known preferences of the resident?
• Has the resident been adjudged incompetent? If not,
o Ask the resident during each meal for their preferences, give them the benefit of the doubt
o Observe the resident for choice preferences and dislikes when communication is difficult for the resident
o Offer simple choices: “Would you like this or that?,” show the food to the resident.
The Five Rights of Dining
1 The right food: the resident’s preferences
2 The right setting: where the resident likes to eat
3 The right preparation: how the resident likes the food made
4 The right time: when the resident wants it
5 The right to choice: the resident’s choice is honored
Involving residents in decisions of the home
• Quality Assurance Performance Improvement (QAPI) process/meetings
o Select and invite residents capable, willing and with much to offer
o Have resident/s sign agreement of understanding and confidentiality
o “Residents and families care just as much about that community as much as or more
than staff team members.” (Beth Irtz, NHA, Focus Consultation)
o This is an item in the CMS funded Artifacts of Culture Change measurement tool.
• Budget decisions
o Residents live in this community where care team members work o Members of a home/family/community share in budget decisions o Residents bring much life/home/business knowledge “to the table”
• Interviewing potential staff
o Consider a system whereby all job applicants have to first make it past a resident
team interview in order to progress
o Residents will be cared for by the job applicant, if hired
o Residents have a sense about people
o Guide such a resident team in questions that can and cannot legally be asked o Utilize residents in creating questions best asked by residents
• Learning Circles
o Designed to hear from each person, learn from each person present
o Can be used in any setting, meeting, gathering
o Can be used to solve problems or just to get to know one another better
o A learning circle equalizes all participants: a volunteer starts, the person to their left
or right goes next and so on until everyone is heard. After hearing from one another around the circle, the facilitator opens it up for group discussion
©2014 Action Pact 1 Food for Thought