What do you say when a resident loses control?

摘要

The most humiliating experience an alert nursing home resident faces is unpredictable incontinence. Generally, nursing home staff perceive the event as inconsequential and follow procedures for cleaning up. Professional staff do not define this event as a psychological catastrophe and respond in a nonchalant manner. The premise for following this nonchalant path appears to be ageism. That is, staffs think incontinence does not breed humiliation among elders. It does. A review of literature supports this position. The critical question becomes, “How does a nursing home professional verbally and nonverbally respond to a resident upon experiencing incontinence for the first time?” Based on a role playing experiment, effective responses to incontinence are discussed and analyzed. Presented at the 28 th Annual Meeting of the Southern Gerontological Society (Greensboro, NC), April 13, 2007. Ashley Nicole Bunnell proof read the draft for publication. Introduction From working in nursing homes over the decades, I have witnessed bowel and bladder incontinence. Two critical biopsychosocial aspects of this event exist. First, this event is a normal part of terminal drop 1 . Bowel or bladder incontinence is a part of giving up on life. Here, terminal drop is the independent variable and incontinence is the dependent variable as illustrated in Figure 1.