By Patricia Hillebrand

Patricia is a Training and Organizational Development Specialist with PHI’s Training and Organizational Development team.

Most of us have had the experience of attempting to make a change in our life. We have made New Year’s resolutions for all types of improvements and tried various activities to get in shape for the summer vacation. Nearly all of these somehow have ended in disappointment and frustration. What is it that makes progress towards our goals so difficult?

The answer to that question can be very different for each of us, but we can be sure the same difficulty we experience in accomplishing our individual goals is also experienced by organizations when they launch their own improvement activities.

Setting Up the Process For Success

Many leaders of long-term care organizations across the country are embarking on a process to move toward resident-centered cultures. This begins with skill building for all stakeholders across the continuum. But once all the training is finished and the organization begins to operationalize the learning, the challenge emerges—How do you keep moving forward?

Here are some tips and suggestions to help you succeed:

• Be sure the top leadership in your organization is on board and committed to moving to a person-centered culture.
• Identify and grow champions in the organization who have the authority to support and resource the process.
• Establish a cross functional team that will engage in learning and planning activities to coach along the change process. This team will need time to meet regularly.
• Complete an organizational assessment to establish baseline data and identify priorities.
• Communicate with all the stakeholders and gather their input. Be sure to include the elders/clients! This is an ongoing process, not a one-time intervention.
• Using information from the assessment, set clear goals, actions, and responsibilities.
• Involve as many stakeholders as possible in ongoing education and implementation of the plan.
• Each time a group completes the training sessions, celebrate the accomplishment.
• Make it fun!