Fun Activities for Seniors to Keep Active

People of all ages are always looking for things to do, and older adults have more time on their hands to explore new hobbies and generally have a good time. Activities for the elderly are no longer limited to the occasional bingo game (although that’s still fun). Seniors these days are interested in learning new skills and experiencing new things. So whether you are aging at home, a resident of an assisted living facility, or caring for a loved one, here are some great activity ideas for senior citizens of the 21st century.

Music and Dancing

Music feeds the soul, and dancing is a great physical activity that everyone can do. Even a senior with mobility issues or advanced dementia can enjoy an activity centered around music. In fact, music therapy recognizes the cognitive benefits of listening to music, and studies show that it can trigger feelings of happiness and contentment. So bring your senior to events such as a live concert, musical, or turn on the radio and chair dance. Typically, Senior living communities offer musical guests for entertainment as well.

Group Exercise Activities

Teacher and active senior women doing yoga class on chairsAs we get older, moving our bodies becomes more and more important. Taking daily walks with friends and family is a wonderful way to release stress and engage with the outside world. Group exercise classes like chair yoga, senior aerobics, or tai chi are a great way to let loose those endorphins and experience something new. If you want to step it up a notch, look for a senior sports league and join a soccer, basketball, or softball team. When you can combine exercise and socialization, you’re taking care of both your physical and mental health.

Reading and Writing

Take some time for yourself and have some fun with reading or creative writing. Book clubs let you share about what you’ve read, or you can just lose yourself in a book in solitude. Reading is a great elderly activity. If you love books but have trouble reading because of failing eyesight, audiobooks have exploded in popularity over the past 10 years, and the performances are fantastic. Maybe you’ve always wanted to try your hand at telling your own story. If so, grab a computer or a pen and paper and write it down! It doesn’t have to be a novel. You can write an essay, short story or even some letters! Whether you’re reading one or trying to write one, books help seniors escape real life for a little while and immerse themselves in another world.

Gardening

Whether it’s your own garden or a community garden at your assisted living community, gardening calms the soul and puts you back in touch with nature. Tending a garden takes time, and seniors can spend hours planting, weeding, and just enjoying the outdoors. It’s a great way to stay active. Plus, all that work is rewarded with a bounty of fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers!

Play Games

Group of Senior Men Playing Cards Game in PatioSometimes you just want to have fun, and games are the perfect elderly activity. There are so many different games to choose from. Putting together puzzles is a good game for your brain and can help maintain fine motor skills. Board games are an enjoyable activity to share with others, as are card games like poker, bridge, and rummy. Assisted living communities also have a variety of activities for seniors that include events such as bingo and trivia nights. Besides being enjoyable, your game of choice exercises your brain, helps with memory, and breaks up feelings of isolation. If you don’t feel like hanging out with a group, play a solitary adult game. Doing crossword puzzles or playing a game on your computer or tablet are good ways to relax and engage your mind.

Art Classes

Art classes cover a broad range of activities for seniors and include everything from painting to jewelry making to even cooking. Anything that piques your interest and promotes creativity is bound to give your cognitive health a boost. People of any age can learn to draw, cook good food, make a scrapbook or make things out of modeling clay. In addition, residents of different communities could come together to interact and learn new skills.

Senior Living Doesn’t Mean Being Bored

It doesn’t matter if you live at home or in one of the many senior living communities, seniors are demanding more out of their retirement years. They want to be busy, active, and engaged. There are many, many elderly activities available, no matter what challenges they may be facing. So come up with a list of ideas and enjoy living life to the fullest!

What Is Comfort Care?

Confused about comfort care and what it entails? Let’s clear things up to give you a better understanding of how it works.

What Does It Mean When Someone Is Put On Comfort Care?

Comfort care relieves symptoms and optimizes comfort when a patient is dying. When patients no longer benefit from curative medical treatment, comfort care can improve the quality of life. This ensures a more positive experience that would otherwise be lacking without it.

Unlike almost any other form of medical care, comfort care does not try to actively cure or treat a disease or illness; only on reducing the impact of disease symptoms when the patient reaches the end of life stage. Additionally, this type of service can be provided at home, in nursing homes, or at a hospital.

Who Receives Comfort Care?

Patients who are admitted to the hospital multiple times during treatment are usually more likely to receive comfort care. Once it is clear that additional treatment is unlikely to have a beneficial impact, it can be provided if the patient wishes.

Comfort and palliative care are the same thing and are suitable for patients who wish to focus on quality rather than quantity in the last few days of their lives. In some cases, shifting to comfort care can extend the patient’s lifespan, while aggressive treatment may serve to shorten it.

Moreover, comfort care is typical among patients with cancer, dementia, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or Alzheimer’s, among others. In addition, it can help reduce symptoms like shortness of breath and breathing trouble, nausea, vomiting, and constipation.

Patients can receive medicine and various forms of treatment to solve these problems, as well as pain, insomnia, or anxiety. Treatments are designed to favor comforts rather than cures. A good example of comfort care treatments is pain relief management.

Comfort of Care

The main purpose of end-of-life care is to ensure the physical and emotional well-being of the patient. Whether in a nursing home, hospital bed, or home residence, it works to reduce discomfort and suffering rather than improve health.

Medications are provided by the overseeing physician to keep the patient as comfortable as possible. The spiritual needs of ill patients are also met to ensure that all needs and services related to terminal care are available.

The NIA (National Institute on Aging) believes that comfort care is an essential part of terminal illness care. As such, there needs to be more focus on training all doctors to provide hospice care. What’s more, physicians need to be capable of providing spiritual and emotional support to dying patients and their family members.

Hospice often comes with physiological concerns, so it’s important for the family to have someone to talk to about what they are feeling. With more attention on hospice training and all that it entails, we can better support those who need it.

This would also allow the patient and their family to have a clearer understanding of what to expect from hospice. It’s not uncommon for loved ones to oppose taking the patient off of aggressive treatment for a symptom and moving to something without the goal of making them better. Medical professionals need to be able to educate everyone involved so that the transition to hospice is easier.

Hospice Care

Hospice and Palliative care are one and the same. Moreover, the care and comfort of both the patients and their families benefit from hospice. This includes support for anyone providing care services, not just the quality of life of the patient.

End-of-life care often involves many caregivers, from those providing emotional support to physical care, such as the doctor and their team. In addition to pain control and comfort, the hospice team can include a social worker, music therapy, chaplain, and other members.

How Long Can Comfort Care Be Provided?

In most cases, the patient must be given a prognosis that they have six months or less to live, according to the NHPCO (National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization). At this juncture, comfort care is typically provided until death.

It’s important to speak with one of our specialists if you need more information. You can also navigate our services menu to help you better understand hospice. Transitioning to comfort care is often much easier for everyone involved when you know what to expect.

Hospice Care at Home

Many families are understandably concerned about someone else looking after a loved one in their home. There is a lot of confusion surrounding home hospice care and all that it entails. We’d like to shed some light on this topic to give you a better understanding of how hospice care works and what you can expect.

What to Expect When Starting Hospice at Home

Hospice care at home consists of 24-hour medical care for the terminally ill. As such, you should expect there to be a trained medical professional on-site at all times. If there are family caregivers involved, hospice can provide respite care to assist through this emotional and spiritual time.

What Does Hospice Do at Home?

Home hospice care brings the medical attention to your or your loved one rather than the opposite. Those suffering from a serious illness or terminal illness require end-of-life care at home. Home hospice care is designed to make the end-of-life transition easier for your loved one.

As such, a hospice team provides health care 24 hours a day in the home of the patient with a terminal illness. The goal is to ensure the quality of life in the final days of the terminally ill. Since hospice care is typically reserved for patients with six months or less to live, special considerations are given.

This involves bringing in a team of trained medical professionals to provide medical care around the clock. The life expectancy of the patient will affect the services provided.

How Do I Prepare My Home for Hospice Care?

white wooden dresser with mirror

When getting a home ready for hospice, families who are prepared help make the process less challenging for themselves. What’s more, they also tend to make the process less stressful for their loved one who is receiving hospice care.

Moreover, research shows that homes that don’t get prepared for hospice care have a greater risk of anxiety, depression, and grief for both the loved ones and the hospice caregivers.

Speak with the Hospice Team

Since it is so important to be prepared, it’s also worth noting that you should take the time to consult with the hospice care provider, as well as the care team. In preparing your home for hospice, it’s a good idea to start by making a to-do list. Have family members chip in and help with preparing the home.

When you are ready to proceed with hospice care, the hospice provider and the members of the hospice medical team will probably ask you for an overview concerning the house and what its environment is like.

This allows the hospice health team to get a better understanding of what to expect so that they can adequately prepare themselves for it. In doing so, they can be sure to provide the best care for your loved one during their stay.

Preparing a home for hospice and palliative care typically comes down to two areas: preparation for the caregiver and comfort of the patient.

Preparation for the Caregiver

Even though hospice services are being given in the home, it is vital for you to consider whether the environment of the home is conducive for caregivers to assist your loved one. Obviously, you don’t need to worry about going through the trouble of converting the home into a hospital room.

It just needs to be set up in a way that makes it easy for caregivers to do what they need to do while also being safe for the patient. Consider the following tips when preparing a home for hospice.

Make Sure the Home Is Accessible to All

One of the best ways to look at the home environment is as if it is a workspace. Again, you don’t need to worry about doing a complete makeover or retrofitting of the home. Instead, you want it to be ideal for hospice care, just as you find in a hospital or long-term care facility.

This means the convenient layout of furniture and items. Living areas need to be safe and easy for everyone involved to navigate. As such, the home should have significant space to move around. After all, you want your loved one to be able to walk around their home safely.

Remove Potential Hazards

Oftentimes, the patient needs assistance with walking. Therefore, you should make sure that the home is free of anything that has the potential to be a hazard. This includes areas like walkways doorways. If at all possible, consider installing safety bars to help prevent falls.

The bathroom, in particular, should be given special consideration to ensure that there are no slip-and-fall hazards. If your loved one has trouble getting around on their own, you should do all that you can to provide them with a safe living environment.

In addition to a safe environment, it’s important to consider any medical equipment that is likely to be brought into the home. This is why you should speak with the hospice team well beforehand to ensure that you know what’s coming.

Once you have an understanding of this, you can accommodate and make changes to the home accordingly. Do all that you can to rid each usable room of obstructions to ensure a safe environment for the hospice team and the patient.

With Hospice, You Are in Control

With most hospice care, you are the one in control. Typically speaking, your hospice team is comprised of:

  • Bereavement manager
  • Social worker
  • Hospice aide
  • Volunteer
  • Physician
  • Chaplain
  • Nurse

Everyone assigned to your hospice care arrives and adheres to a schedule that you have picked out. It’s important to keep in mind that they are there to care for your loved one, not to take over the home. As such, they will often turn to you for guidance and direction.

Hospice Gets Easier

Additionally, they will have answers to your questions and provide equal guidance for you. Hospice teams are confident about their abilities and gentle with the patient. With every hospice visit, you will find that things tend to get easier.

What’s more, you and your loved one will find yourselves looking forward to when the hospice team arrives. Hospice care is often a spiritual and emotional journey. A such, you need assistance to help you get through this difficult and generally unique time in your life – whether you are the one receiving hospice care or a family member.

What Does a Nursing Assistant Do?

If you are interested in working in healthcare, one thing that’s hard to get used to is all the acronyms! CNA, LPN, RN – so many letters! CNA stands for Certified Nursing Assistant, and it’s a vital job for patient care in hospitals and home health care facilities. Patients rely on CNAs for various tasks. Those who take the time to complete the education program to become certified often find it challenging but rewarding work.

The Role of a Nursing Assistant

Whether CNAs work in nursing homes or hospitals, their primary role is to support a nurse in the care of a patient or resident. They perform a wide range of services within the scope of their job description. Medical duties include lifting and moving patients, fulfilling patient requests, and taking and recording vital signs such as temperature and blood pressure at regular intervals.

CNAs are also responsible for the personal care of their patients. They often assist in daily tasks such as bathing patients to keep them clean and comfortable, serving meals, and helping them eat and drink. They also ensure their rooms are kept clean and sanitary, and help them change positions or get in and out of bed.

An CNA must be observant and have good communication skills. As they usually spend a lot of time with their patients and often get to know them very well. Because of this, they are the first ones to notice a change in health or clinical status and must communicate that to the nurses right away.

How Are CNAs Different From other Nursing Assistants?

If you think the role of an CNA sounds a lot like a STNA or LNA, you aren’t wrong. They are very similar, but there are a couple of small differences. All nursing assistants go through a similar education and certification process and work at the same types of facilities. However, certification for a CNA typically takes about 120 hours to complete. It’s comprised of 80 hours of classroom work and 40 hours of clinical training.

We have Certified Nursing Assistants here are Mary T!

Working as an State Tested Nursing Assistant in Assisted Living

If you are interested in pursuing a position as an CNA, you may want to consider working in an assisted living facility. Nurses’ aides and nursing assistants of all levels can make a real difference in the lives of residents that live in these facilities. Medical needs are obviously important. But personal day-to-day comfort is arguably more valuable to those residing in nursing homes and other care facilities. CNAs spend most of their time assisting their patients in whatever they need. No two days are alike. You may spend one day using your skills to take vital signs. And you might spend another day providing emotional support to the family of someone who has passed on. It’s challenging work to perform. But you’re never bored!

Come Work For Mary T

CNAs are highly empathetic people. They seek out this profession because they want to make a difference in the lives of others. We expect the need for care workers to increase on a national level due to the aging population in the country. If you are a compassionate person who loves to work with people, becoming an CNA may be the perfect career for you.

Mary T is always looking for kind individuals who have chosen to make the care of others the focus of their careers. Visit our website to see our open positions and join our team!

Life in an Active Lifestyle Community

As an active senior, you are likely to prefer living in a community that allows for greater independence. That’s where active lifestyle communities enter the picture. Thanks to these independent living communities, active adults can enjoy a life of freedom while still afforded the security of a private facility.

If you are interested in learning more about these retirement communities, we’ve compiled a helpful resource below that details essential information just for you.

What Does Active Lifestyle Community Mean?

Also known as active adult communities, an active lifestyle community is a retirement option that is designed for older adults who can care for themselves and are looking to take advantage of physical exercise and other lifestyle services.

As independent living options, active adult communities may offer amenities like:

  • Indoor swimming pool
  • Wellness classes
  • Fitness centers
  • Outdoor pools
  • Walking trails
  • Tennis courts
  • Golf clubs

What’s more, active adult communities offer all of the same amenities and services that you’d expect to find in a senior community. Residents can look forward to getting as much daily physical activity as they desire, as well as maintenance support, transportation services, ongoing lawn and home care, laundry service, meal centers, dining, care services, and more.

If you are a healthy senior who is considering retirement or already in the middle of your retirement, active adult communities may be a great fit for your needs. Read on to learn more about these independent living communities and what they can do for you.

What Are the Benefits of a 55+ Community?

Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of senior communities is that there is little to no maintenance required. Instead, on-site teams work to keep the private apartments looking their best. For many residents, this is the most appealing part of being in a senior living community.

Another essential factor is the peace and quiet afforded by active adult communities. Most are kid-free and allow for a relaxing environment. Of course, children and grandchildren can visit. But most days are met with tranquility and relaxation, free of noise and interference.

Social Gatherings

Residents also appreciate the on-site programs offered, such as community events. Many senior living communities promote social gatherings that allow residents to get to know one another and develop friendships.

You’ll enjoy programs like movie night and arts and crafts classes. Even live events, fine dining, dancing, and many other activities to keep you busy each night of the week.

Activities Just for You

And of course, active adult communities allow each resident to stay in shape through a variety of fun and entertaining services and events. As we detailed above, you may find some communities with health and fitness centers, family centers, tennis courts, swimming pools, and more.

Senior Apartments: The Best of Both Worlds

As you explore your options for senior living, you will find that some communities offer a variety of housing. The most popular are those with apartments. These give you a comfortable setting that is easy to maintain while allowing for socializing.

Most seniors prefer a low-maintenance setting, and apartments afford you this type of environment. What’s more, older adults often appreciate the compact layout of apartments. They tend to be easier to navigate and keep in order.

Outside of your residence, you are likely to find facilities that accommodate a variety of events. And if you require medical care, services are available to ensure that you get the care you need. If you have doctor’s appointments to attend, transportation is given to make sure you get there on time.

Is an Active Adult Community Right for You?

If you are looking for a quiet community that affords you amenities and activities for personal wellness, an active adult community might be right for you. It’s important that you research your options to ensure that you find a living community that suits your preferences.

If you love to golf or play tennis, you’ll want to search for a living option that has a golf or tennis course, for example. If you want to stay close to your family, it could limit your available options, so it’s important to speak with a trusted specialist who can help you make the best decision.

Retire in an Active Lifestyle Community

 woman walking on sidewalk

Retiring in an active lifestyle community can make the difference you need in your life. Rather than move into facilities that don’t accommodate your needs, active adult communities allow you to live your life to its fullest extent.

While some amenities like on-site medical care and daily meals aren’t typically included, your good health and independent lifestyle be fulfilled, giving you the enjoyment you desire in your older age.

You will be able to make friends, enjoy walking trails, personal fitness, and much more. If you’re ready to explore your possibilities, speak with one of our trusted senior living advisors today.