Nursing Home Staff Continuing Education
Communication is critical to residents' quality of life, safety, staff and client satisfaction, and efficiency. For clients with communication disorders, nursing staff can pursue continuing education to better understand the nature of these communication disorders, learn how to optimize these residents' communication abilities (strategies, tools, modifying the environment), and how to change their own communication behaviours.
If you are organizing a staff or client education session at a long term care facility, please contact Shoreline for more information. Sessions are offered on the following topics, but can also be tailored to your organization's needs.
Communicating with Adults with Aphasia
1 hour | no charge
Participants will learn about the nature of aphasia, how communication partner training can improve the satisfaction of staff and the quality of life of residents, and an introduction to strategies to use in their interactions.
Communicating with Persons with Dementia
1 hour | no charge
Participants will learn about the nature of communication difficulties in persons with dementia, the benefits of communication partner training for residents and staff, and how they can modify their interactions with residents to improve residents' quality of life and staff satisfaction.
Successful Communication with Persons with Dementia
see full program description for pricing | 12 inservices +/- coaching
Nurses, Continuing Care Assistants, students, and other staff in nursing homes and home care can develop skills to accommodate for residents’/clients’ reduced communication ability. Staff complete their care tasks faster, residents receive better care (eg. food intake, pain assessment), and staff and residents are more satisfied with their relationship. Shoreline offers an advanced training course delivered over 12 inservice sessions with the option for additional coaching with an S-LP. This inservice program was developed by Santo Pietro and Ostuni (2003) [1].
Speech, Voice, and Linguistic Changes in Parkinson's Disease
1 hour | no charge
Most persons with Parkinson's disease will experience reduced communicative abilities during the course of this condition. 90% of persons will experience speech and voice symptoms, up to 50% will acquire neurogenic stuttering [2], most experience cognitive decline including reduced verbal fluency (i.e., word finding) with many advancing to mild cognitive impairment or Parkinson's Disease Dementia (80%) [3]. In this inservice, participants will learn about these possible changes and what treatments are available.
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[1] Santo Pietro, M. J., & Ostuni, E. (2003). Successful communication with persons with Alzheimer’s disease: An inservice manual (2nd ed.). St. Louis, MO: Butterworth Heinemann.
[2] Goberman, A. M., Blomgren, M., & Metzger, E. (2010). Characteristics of speech disfluency in Parkinson disease. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 23, 470-478.
[3] Buter, T. C., van den Hout, A., Matthews, F. E., Larsen, J. P., Brayne, C., & Aarsland, D. (2008). Dementia and survival in Parkinson disease: A 12-year population study. Neurology, 70, 1017-1022.