THE COLOSSEUM

THE COLOSSEUM

Despite your best intensions…

Are you working in the Roman Colosseum? Providing long-term care can make you feel that way. Are you a surviving Gladiator, uncertain about the next challenge coming your way?  Or are you a hapless a spectator, sitting in the stands and powerless to stop the carnage playing out in front of you? Do you unintentionally find yourself a witless victim emerging from the dark pit wondering what dangers you will face?  Whether you cycle through these roles or remain stuck in one, the situation can be exhausting for you and devastating to your organization.

If this analogy rings true for your daily work experience, it’s time to exit the Colosseum and return to providing high-quality, long-term care for seniors on a sustainable business model.

There are many variables in our profession that can make you feel as if you are in the Colosseum and powerless to improve your situation.  A deteriorating physical plant may be a calling card for OSHA.  The ever-growing list and complexity of federal and state regulations may leave you wondering what loose ends a regulator may uncover.  Issues can arise with vendors who may not live up to the performance and quality they contracted to provide.

Combine those external factors with your own internal issues.  Take employee engagement: how does the workforce feel about the organization they work for?  How does each of them express these feelings during their treatment of the residents and their relationships with one another? 

How about Resident satisfaction? At best, dissatisfied Residents and families spend a lot of time telling us about why they are dissatisfied. At worst, they pursue litigation when adverse events occur, or leave your community, or both. 

Your current Residents and families are your best sources of building and sustaining the business. But we also know that dissatisfied Residents and families do not refer other Residents to your care or give you good reviews.  If we think the situation is impossible to address, then the business will be impossible to sustain. The Colosseum long ago went out of business and is falling down.

It is true that you cannot predict everything that will happen in a long-term care community.  But the methods and tools to assure consistent quality and Resident satisfaction, combined with rapid and appropriate crisis response, are proven and reliable. Your organization just needs to know what they are and how to use them. These skills and practices will allow you to exit the Colosseum and bring predictability and sustainability to your quality of care and satisfaction to your work.  Yes, it is possible that you can once again love your job and be loved for the way you do it. 

Our remedies deliver reflection, emotional intelligence, constructive feedback, root-cause analysis, and a collaborative team approach.  They also provide a laser-focused assessment of how the organization currently operates, and a vision of how to lead it to optimal performance within its constraints. 

For more information on how to bring your organization out of the Colosseum, contact Apple Blossom Unlimited, LLC at appleblossomunlimited@gmail.com.  Look at it this way: If you can make good money on highly satisfied and well-cared-for Residents, everyone will want to work with you!