I have cared for seniors in one capacity or another since childhood. I have spent the last 9 years developing a program of care for individuals with alzheimer's. Five years ago I implemented my program and the results have been outstanding. Our clients have shown dramatic improvement, slowed progression of their illness and enjoyed a spectacular quality of life. Three years ago I began a test project of teaching our alzheimer's clients a form of sign language to assist them in communicating their needs and understanding our requests. I have had great success in teaching these clients the signs and having them respond appropriately. I have even had a clinet the began signing back to us and made up a few of her own signs. I am so excited about the program we provide for our clients and the improvement we see and the quality of life they enjoy. For our clients alzheimer's is just a word not a sentence.
Thanks so much for posting and welcome to our community. This does sounds like a great way to communicate when verbal methods do not work. I suspect it might be different for each patient and their caregivers, but something that one should consider.
Could you give our readers a bit more information about how you devised the system and what kinds of specific improvements you have seen? I think this woudl be very valuable to our community of caregivers and patients.
All the best, sue
Hi Sue: I am currently using the sign language with every client I have with great success. The sign language is a 2 part system. First the touch to get attention and then the sign. I use very simple hand gestures. I had a client that would not eat or drink, like putting the glass and spoon to tight closed lips. With repetition this client learned the sign for eating and drinking and soon I had no problem at meals and eventually she began eating very hearty meals completely on her own, she was in her 18 year with Alzheimer's. This week I began teaching 2 signs to 3 different clients. One client has advanced parkinsons, the other two have alzheimers. The two signs were for drink and I Love You. My client with parkinsons has been signing drink at every meal and I Love You at bedtime. One of my Alzheimer's patients has remembered and repeated verbally and signed I Love You all week and about 50% of the time remembers the drink sign. My other client is responding to the signs but needs prompting to sign back. The signs I teach are for the basics, eating, drinking, hungry, swallow, sit, stand, toilet, listen, etc. The sign language is part of a total care program for our clients, you must have a really good care plan in place to get the maximum benefit from the sign language portion. We very seldom get called to care for a client that is in the beginning stages of alzheimers or that is doing well. Most of our clients are in really bad shape all the way around and we take these messes and with alot of herd work, make miracles. It is so wonderful to see the transformation. I just spent my evening having bannana splits with 3 clients, what a great way to end the day.