Wandering

Three times already this week I’ve seen news stories come across my email inbox on residents who are missing from assisted living communities. Most have Alzheimer’s disease, but some have other mental or memory problems related to other diseases entirely.

It’s not really the kind of front page attention you want, if you run a senior care community!

More than once during the time we owned our own assisted living communities we had residents wander away. Our communities were delayed egress controlled and very closely, monitored, too. But residents STILL managed to get out undetected on more than one occasion.

The good news is that none of our escapees ever made the front page, even though one was severely injured while away from our building.

One thing we learned was that every single member of our staff team, especially those individuals working nights, weekends and evenings (every escapee happened during those more lightly-staff times, interestingly enough) needed training specifically in this subject.

This might not be on your list of required staff training courses, but it should be, if only for self-preservation.

We can help! We’ve got a course on wandering that we’ll be happy to enroll your staff in!

You might consider, as well, a custom training course for every building, with specific information about exactly what to do in case of a resident wandering incident. The better prepared your staff are, the quicker they’ll act in case of a missing resident.

And the faster staff act, with a clear sense of purpose and understanding, the less likely it is that your community will appear on the front page with publicity you don’t want.