Shift Happens! Monthly Lessons Learned. No. 2

This month’s Lesson: When dealing with behavioral challenges, become an investigator and find out the underlying problem causing the behavior.

By Lida Cubillos – Founder/CEO

It is natural and a constant occurrence when you are caring for the elderly in senior assisted living homes that you will deal with behavior problems and ‘acting out’. Especially if the residents have any kind of mental issues like dementia. The question is, “how will you deal with these behavioral outbursts?”

Two specific situations come to mind here. We had one resident who had just come back from the hospital after having hip surgery. He was in pain. Because of the loss of his mental functions over the years his ability to speak well was also affected and couldn’t explain how he was feeling and what might be wrong. He started to act out, was difficult to talk with, and became increasingly confrontational. I calmly sat with him and began to ask him questions as to how he was feeling and made suggestions as to what might be the problem. In his case, he was in a lot of pain and could not express that. In another case, a resident was getting more and more agitated and aggressive. None of the caregivers could calm him down or know why he was acting this way. I again calmly went up to him and asked, ‘do you have to go to the bathroom?’ He said, ‘that’s it–that’s it!’

In order to deal with behavioral challenges in elderly people properly, become an investigator and ask questions to find out the underlying problem(s) they are dealing with. It might be constipation, thirst, pain, fear, hunger, or a variety of other issues. You will never know until you ask.