Homeliving in Style

Retirement home used to be a euphemism for nursing home. Retirement homes were places where people went to die.

However, now that people are retiring earlier, living longer, and enjoying good health well into old age, retirement homes have gotten a makeover. When someone says retirement home now, a variety of living arrangements come to mind.

Senior Apartments

Senior apartments are buildings designed for senior citizens. The nicer ones offer meal service, activities and events, ice cream parlors, beauty salons, small convenience stores, and free transportation.

The rooms feature panic buttons as well as phones and grab bars in the bathroom and extra wide doors to accommodate wheelchairs.

Senior apartments usually do not have trained medical personnel on staff, so if a resident needs extra assistance with personal care, he or she will probably have to hire and agency to come in to provide it. Since this can be very expensive, retirement home residents with these needs may want to consider moving to a slightly higher level of care.

Assisted Living Or Residential Care Facilities

Assisted living facilities provide a higher level of care than senior apartments, and there is usually at least one nurse or certified nurse s aide (CNA) on duty at all times. Assisted living staff may remind people to come to meals and make sure they get there, check vital signs, dispense medication, and help with bathing or dressing. While assisted living facilities are not regulated as closely as nursing homes, they do undergo regular state inspections.

Nursing Homes Or Skilled Nursing Facilities

Nursing homes serve two functions. They can do intensive rehabilitation to try to restore a person who has been ill or injured to his or her previous level of functioning.

Or they also can provide what is called custodial care. This simply means that the retirement home is responsible for making sure the person is clean, fed appropriately, invited to activities, toileted regularly, and has other physical, spiritual, social and psychological needs met. The home is staffed with nurses and CNAs round the clock.

Nobody ever wants to go to this kind of retirement home, of course, but it is important to realized that the nursing home today is a far cry from the nursing home of even fifteen or twenty years ago. Newer nursing homes look far less institutional, and a large amount of emphasis is placed on quality of life and the resident s right to have choices and preferences respected wherever possible.

A New Retirement Home Concept: Aging In Place

Aging in place is a term coined by some senior communities that offer private apartments, assisted living accommodations, and skilled nursing facilities all on the same property, sometimes all in the same building. That way, seniors can rest easy in the knowledge that if their care needs change, they will not have to shop around for a new place to live. They will simply move up a level of care on the same property.

Going to live in a retirement home probably isn t anyone s idea of fun, but care has improved tremendously and more options than ever before exist to allow the senior adult to function as independently as possible.

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