Elder care, the sensitive way

Training illuminates the range of challenges older people deal with.

By CHANDRA BROADWATER, Times Staff Writer
Published November 4, 2007

Shauna Thomas, a business office specialist at Amedisys puts on glasses that give some sense of what can happen to vision after a stroke during "sensitivity training" Thursday. The training is designed for people who work with the geriatric population so that they understand the challenges and frustrations that come as the body deteriorates.
	[David Degner | Times]

Imagine this: You're 80, and you have cataracts. Or maybe glaucoma.

Or your eyesight might be limited because of yellowing of the eye, which happens to most people as they age.

You have trouble seeing colors, especially the white, yellow, blue or green of your pills. Along with that, your sense of smell isn't so good, and food isn't so appealing.

Not to mention that you can't really see the chicken and peas on your plate. Or use a fork or a knife very well because of the arthritis in your hands and the loss of a sense of touch in your fingertips.

On top of all this, you can't hear well, either. So the people who take care of you at your home, if you're lucky enough to be there, or at the assisted living facility where you have been placed, yell or scream at you instead of making their voices deeper and easier to interpret.

You can imagine all of this with the help of Deborah Brooker's sensitivity training. The former social worker, who used to investigate adult abuse cases, started teaching the classes through her current job at Amedisys Home Health Care in Hernando about a month ago. Her goal is to help those who serve the elderly population around the state better understand and serve them.

"It's all about giving people the respect they deserve," Brooker said. "I've always thought this is one of the best things I've ever done. It made me wonder what could happen to me."

Brooker, 47, first took the training in 1998. At the time, she was finishing up school at Saint Leo University. Through a project at Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers, sensitivity training kits had been created.

Years later, she thought about how the training could help at all the places she visits in the county. While digging through some boxes after an office move, she found several of the kits from the hospital.

The lessons include a handout, which Brooker adapted for her own training, and a series of paper frames with funny lenses that look like 3-D glasses worn at the movies.

As with the class she took almost a decade ago, Brooker leads her trainees through a series of lessons while reading from the handout.

The cloudy glaucoma glasses make it impossible to see anything. Even a newspaper held at the tip of the nose is lost in a fog.

The glasses with orange plastic lenses tint the world. Yellow looks like it is white, and it's difficult to tell the difference between green and blue fake pills.

And by putting on a pair of gloves, one realizes what it's like to lose manual dexterity and feeling. It's difficult to open a pill bottle, let alone write with a pen or do other everyday things most people don't think twice about - at least until they are old. But by then, there's another entire generation of people who don't understand.

"You've got to imagine what it's like to feel that way," Brooker said. "If the staff at some assisted living facility or nursing home is not sensitive, then their people are in trouble."

During the training, Brooker also provides suggestions to help agencies and facilities treat people better. Those include speaking slowly and directly in front of a person who has bad hearing. Another might be to use large print for handouts and signs. And, to address one of her pet peeves: Use yellow marker boards with red writing.

"I go into places all the time, and they always have white marker boards with black writing," she said, shaking her head. "The people who live there can't see that."

So far, Brooker has taught a few classes at places in Hernando, including the Residence at Timber Pines and Atria Evergreen Woods. Lynn Bloom, executive director at the Atria facility, said he plans to bring Brooker back to train all employees.

She found trying to open a pill bottle with a pair of frumpy gloves the most eye-opening experience. She knows now what it's like for her husband, a diabetic, who has lost feeling in his hands.

At the facility, Bloom said, she also had a door removed because of all the residents who kept running into the corner. She realized that most of the people who hit it probably couldn't see it for one health reason or another.

"It's amazing to realize how incapacitated people can be but not look like it," Bloom said. "The class is really terrific and informative."

With dreams of traveling the state to give the training to as many people as possible, Brooker said she will be content with squeezing in a class a week. Her current position as an account executive with Amedisys in Hernando has her traveling all over the place. Sometimes she also works out of the office in Pasco, where she lives.

"Both of my parents have passed away, and this always makes me wish I could have spent more time understanding them, especially my father, who lived to be 82," she said. "We need to remember that everything impacts everyone. And when it comes to older people, most of the time they just need a little assistance. Then they can get back on track."

Chandra Broadwater can be reached at cbroadwater@sptimes.com or 352 848-1432.

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For information about sensitivity training, contact Deborah Brooker at dbrooker5429@amedisys.com or call (352) 425-8072.

[Last modified November 3, 2007, 19:56:01]