How Vitality is Protecting Residents, Families and Team Members from COVID-19

April 15, 2020
| Vitality Living

When it comes to healthy aging, quite honestly, there’s a lot to do. You’re supposed to make sure to keep your body active and your brain engaged all while maintaining your social connections as well. Sure, the benefits to your overall well-being are worth the effort, but retirement is supposed to be a time with less responsibility on your plate, right? Well, it turns out that in senior living you can have your cake and eat it too, so to speak. Here’s how programs like our Vivid Life make keeping active, engaged, and connected easy and fun!

Benefits of Healthy Aging

Good things happen when you focus on healthy aging. In addition to feeling better overall, which in and of itself is a win, other benefits of keeping active, engaged, and connected include:

Improved ability to do everyday things
Reduced impact of illness and chronic disease
Enhanced mobility, flexibility, and balance
Improved sleep
Increased energy level
Reduced feelings of depression and stress
Increased feelings of happiness and self-confidence
Reduced risk of cognitive decline
Increased mental adaptability and cognitive reserve
Improved memory recall and problem-solving skills
Improved concentration and attention to detail

How Senior Living Can Help

At home, particularly when living alone, it can be hard to stay as active, engaged, and connected as you’d like. From lack of opportunity to lack of motivation to lack of transportation to mobility challenges, and more, it’s tough, we get it! That’s why we created the Vivid Life program in our senior living communities. It’s composed of three parts: Vibrant Body, Vibrant Brain, and Vibrant Connections. Here’s what each entails:

Vibrant Body – We offer amenities such as a state-of-the-art fitness center, a pool, walking trails, gardening opportunities, and even a dog park to help you stay active. A sample of activities includes:

Walking club – Daily walks at different outdoor locations using pedometers to measure steps.
Yoga – At least once per week for gentle yoga, and once per week for mindful breathing.
Fitness classes – At least two times per week using a variety of hand weights, resistance bands, and circuit-type exercises.
Tai Chi – At least once per week with a live instructor.
Non-traditional exercise – Dancing, gardening, etc. at least two times per week.
Physical games and sports – Golf, putting, bowling, croquet, bocce, and ping pong available daily with organized events one to two times per week.

Vibrant Brain – We offer monthly calendars filled with classes, events, creative arts, and enrichment opportunities to help keep you engaged. A sample of activities includes:

Visiting lecture series – Twice per month with topics such as cultural, historical, local interest, career-oriented, etc.
Creative art series – At least one per week with a theme that runs 3-6 weeks, such as poetry writing, storytelling, painting, digital photography, etc.
Learning series – At least three times per month with an emphasis on learning something new such as foreign language, sign language, technology, hobbies, etc.
Games – At least one time per week and may include poker, bridge, Scrabble, etc.
Mindfulness – A meditation class once per week and gratitude discussion group twice monthly.
Church service – At least once a week through visits by local churches.
Stress reduction – At least once per month class that offers deep breathing exercises, nature walks, music appreciation, spa-type treatments, etc.

Vibrant Connections – We offer resident-led clubs, social events, outings and volunteer opportunities for any interest to help you stay connected. A sample of activities includes:

Outings – At least twice per month and may include going to concerts, art shows, museum visits, theatre productions, etc.
Intergenerational programming – At least once per month and focuses on building relationships between young adults/children and residents.
New resident welcome party – At least once per month to formally introduce all new residents, and includes ice breakers, social games, etc. to encourage connection.
Philanthropic program – At least once per month provide residents the opportunity to give back to the community, such as volunteering for a local food bank or pet shelter.
Resident-led clubs – May include game clubs, professional clubs, common interests, etc. that meet at least monthly.

What’s more, it’s all right outside your door (or transportation is provided offsite) and all in a supportive environment with home maintenance, housekeeping, and restaurant-style dining freeing your time to make it even easier to stay active, engaged, and connected.

Learn more about Vitality Living’s Vivid Life programs. Or find a Vitality Living community near you today to schedule a tour.

These are challenging times, however, as always, Vitality is 100% committed to our vision of creating vibrant senior living communities where residents thrive, families engage and team members are proud to work. To that end, we are working tirelessly – and have been since February – to limit COVID-19 exposure for all these groups. Here are measures we’ve taken.

Quick Action

Vitality Living’s Leadership Team has daily calls in which we discuss guidelines and recommendations from local, state and the federal government. Based on CDC guidelines, we update protocols regularly to try to stay ahead of the situation. Our team members have been able to adjust on the fly as necessary and are diligently focused on taking care of residents because we understand this is most difficult on them and their families.

Strong Communication

We want to provide total transparency. That’s why in mid-March we started live-streaming daily COVID-19 updates from executive directors at each Vitality Living community to provide the opportunity for families to ask questions and get updates as they’re announced. Vitality also places the recorded version on each community’s Facebook feed to be accessed at your convenience.

Creative Engagement

Our community Facebook feeds also provide great insight into how we’re helping senior living residents to continue enjoying life and to stay engaged safely. We’ve come up with some tremendously creative ways to do this, such as happy hour delivery carts and fun contests!

We also use technology to help prevent loneliness and isolation now that access to loved ones has been restricted to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. From encouraging FaceTime to providing computer and tablet access to helping residents connect, we believe it’s important for them to regularly communicate and ‘see’ their family and friends.

Precautions We’re Taking

While there have been mandates at the local, state and national levels, in many cases we had already implemented those recommendations on our own such as restricting visitors to providers of essential care only. We simply felt it was the right thing to do, mandate or not.

In any case, it’s our goal not only to meet mandates as they arise, but to go above and beyond in the states in which we operate. We are:

Screening essential visitors via a COVID-19 questionnaire which gauges their risk of exposure; if answering ‘yes’ to any question they are prohibited from visiting.
Screening employees via a COVID-19 questionnaire which gauges their risk of exposure; if answering ‘yes’ to any question they are screened further.
Taking the temperature of all essential visitors and employees before entering the building and anyone with a temp of over 98.9 will not be allowed to enter.
Checking resident temperatures 2x a day.
Restricting anyone under the age of 18 from entering the community.
Prohibiting outside pets.
Practicing frequent hand hygiene with CDC-approved alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water; washing for at least 20 seconds.
Frequently disinfecting commonly-touched environmental surfaces to decrease environmental contamination.
Taking standard precautions, such as wearing masks, gloves and gowns as situations warrant their use.

In addition, we’ve recently begun or will soon implement:

In-room dining in independent living and assisted living; meals will be delivered to residents similar to room service.
A requirement for all essential employees to wear masks.

Preparedness is Key

There are several benefits that Vitality Living offers to residents during this time. One advantage versus nursing home settings is that our apartments are essentially their own ecosystems with individual heating and air systems. Even in shared rooms, we have options to create better isolation if needed.

Another advantage is that we offer a community pharmacy. We’ve partnered with Guardian, which is a closed pharmacy, meaning there are no customers in and out, automation is used to fill orders and delivery drivers comply with all CDC guidelines so you (as well as us) can feel confident your medication has much less risk of exposure than through a standard retail pharmacy,

We also offer Tena incontinence products which can be ordered by the community, charged to your statement and delivered to your door, again giving you added confidence. To sign up for either the pharmacy service or Tena, simply contact your executive director of wellness.

Even with these advantages and the precautions we’re taking, at Vitality we know that being prepared is key as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve. That’s why we are:

Contracting with a company that specializes in facility cleaning if needed.
Sourcing additional protective equipment and disinfectant/cleaning products.
Working on isolation protocols such as taking sections of buildings that aren’t full and preparing them as potential isolation areas.
Sourcing onsite COVID-19 testing capabilities by partnering with a lab group and working through the protocols of how we might be able to use this tool for select groups to learn results sooner.
Working to put in place communication protocols should a resident or employee contract COVID-19.

For more information on our response to COVID-19, please visit: https://www.vitalityseniorliving.com/vitality-covid-19/

COVID-19, Family Dynamics

Vitality Living

Articles By Author