Life and Death in Assisted Living

Life and Death in Assisted Living Communal living that provides planned activities, housekeeping and laundry, transportation, exercise, meals, and wellness programs is assisted living. These facilities assist with activities of daily living: such as bathing, eating, dressing, and medical reminders. The Emeritus Corporation provides trained nursing assistants that help the elderly with aided care. In this corporation they also provide a memory care wing for the residents suffering dementia or Alzheimer’s. This unit requires their staff to go through “General Orientation” and have an eight-hour class that’s the Join Their Journey Program, teaching them how to approach and speak to the residents. “Assisted living was created to offer seniors who could no longer live on their own in a more home-like environment than nursing homes. And since most facilities offered little or no medical care, they were loosely regulated,” said A.C. Thompson. The main concern to people involved with assisted living, are the facilities well regulated and do they meet the needs of the residents? The Emeritus Corporation is one of the leading assisted living facilities in the United States and strived to provide quality care. There were many cases investigated that the staff did not meet the needs of the residents, for example Merle Fall, who forced herself out of a second story window. Fall suffered dementia and claimed she was not well treated. Linda, her daughter stated, “She was miserable where she was and she wanted to go home. And it was really hard to leave her there. But we truly thought it was the best thing for her. We truly thought it was a way to keep her safe.” She later died of a brain bleed. Emeritus’s response to the incident was, “That was one where we actually followed our policies and procedures. They had checked all the windows in the community to make sure that none of them opened past 12 inches, which is the regulation in the state of Mississippi.” The