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"Two are better..."
Professionalism and the Activity Department
Rand
Bass
ACC
Are
you in it alone? Are you the Activity Department? Do you supervise
a number of assistants, or do you function day to day as an
assistant? Whatever your particular role and overriding priority,
a consideration which will impact how you are perceived within
your facility and your bottom line efficiency in your job is
your professionalism, which is determined in large part by how
you see yourself professionally. Professionalism is usually
demonstrated by a set of behaviors that indicate your commitment
to your profession and to the delivery of services to your residents,
a primary objective.
The expectancies in performance for the activity professional
are seemingly endless and insurmountable. Most often when we
invest ourselves totally and unreservedly, we reach some measure
of self-defeat or burn-out. Assert yourself as a valuable element
in service delivery to the residents. Hold in reserve your last
ounce of energy by spending time at the outset to answer your
own need for self-determination as a professional who is prepared
for today, tomorrow, this month and the months to come.
Continuous
pressures include charting/record keeping, departmental meetings,
and simultaneous planning for and implementing an activity program
diversified to meet the needs of the alert resident and the
senile, confused, Alzheimer's afflicted, stroke patients, depressed,
challenged, and developmentally disabled. Planning ahead, and
transporting residents to and from the activity, conducting
an activity, and cleaning up are also challenges. While thinking
about creative ideas for next month's calendar of activities,
you find yourself taking continuing education courses for CEU's,
managing a volunteer program, composing a newsletter, writing
press releases and promoting media coverage of special events,
inviting community involvement in your facility, and even acting
as a social connection between residents and other staff members.
You are expected to act as a speaker/counselor/teacher, and
mediator for peer professionals, coworkers, volunteers, families,
members of the outside community, and community groups and officials.
You clean the floor or babysit with the residents considered
unmanageable or are called upon to provide special services
to the residents and attendant family members in the private
rooms. What is happening for the majority of the other residents
during the times when you are the mixologist for "Happy
Hour" in the upscale suites if you are a "Department
of One"? Where do you draw the line? Setting priorities
and compromising to get the job done are part and parcel to
your professional persona.
The
personal productivity of each of us in the work environment
and facilitating this for residents and staff members as well
speaks to more than one of the basic parameters of human needs
on which we base our programming. We want to address the social,
emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual needs of the residents
for whom we plan activity programs while continuously informing
staff of the programs and their basic objectives. We want to
raise the level of professionalism among the staff team in service
to increased quality of daily living.
A comprehensive program of activities representative of the
particular interests of your residents will positively reflect
on you as a professional and will make for satisfied residents.
The hallmark of excellence in activity programs is apparent
when residents profess enjoyment of and participation in the
programs you offer. If their interests become an integral part
of program planning, you invest your residents in the programming.
If your residents are positive about the activity programs that
are offered to them from the first interview, why should the
survey team members investigate further? An obvious conclusion
is that you are professionally a success. For yourself, create
files for contacts, daily program activity plans, resident records,
creative ideas, clip-art, stationery, correspondence/memoranda
and e-mails, and calendar/newsletter plans. Files can also be
created on the computer.
Take
a major step forward by scheduling a planning day at work to
reorganize yourself as the professional you truly are. A basic
list of considerations for you as an activity professional includes:
·
Adopt a professional manner, and accept yourself as a professional.
· Present a professional appearance.
· Get organized, plan ahead.
· Be sure your program of activities is representative/interest-based.
· Involve resident family and friends in activities.
· Involve the community.
· Promote the facility in the community.
· Use the newsletter as a public relations tool, and
encourage other departments to contribute.
· Recruit and utilize volunteers.
· Take the residents into the community on appropriate
outings.
· Build a working relationship between departments within
your facility and your company.
· Continue your education and become a certified professional.
· Take time off to recharge yourself. Do not forget vacations.
· Assert yourself as a professional by becoming an integral
and active participant in your professional organizations locally
and on a state and national level. NN
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