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Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
During the past couple of years, most long-term care communities have undergone a shift in culture to move away from an institutional approach to senior care to a more personal approach. This transformation is known in the senior living industry as culture change.
One strong example of this shift in senior living is known as the Green House.
A Green House is a home designed for a small number of residents, called elders. The term Green House was selected to suggest a home where people can continue to grow and thrive. Each elder has his or her own separate living area and bathroom. But the heart of the Green House is the kitchen, hearth and dining area. The Green House employs a universal worker, called Shahbazim, who provide all care for the elders, from nursing and laundry to cooking. The Shahbazim are certified nursing assistants (CNA) who undergo an additional 120 hours of training, during which they learn how to fulfill their foodservice duties. (Shahbazim is an ancient Persian word meaning royal falcon. According to Robert Jenkens, director of the Green House Project, the term was chosen because it has no negative connotations that he says are often associated with CNAs.)
Dr. Bill Thomas developed the Green House model. Thomas worked as a medical director in a nursing home in upstate New York, when "he realized that there was really good care and there were really good people, but the [residents] were really struggling with loneliness, boredom and a sense of helplessness," Jenkens says.
Thomas developed the Eden Alternative in 1991 as a way to work within the confines of a nursing home to provide better care to help alleviate the residents' struggles. "A lot of nursing homes adopted the Eden philosophy and then some of those realized that they had a very old physical building and that they were going to...
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Commuter plans., November 15, 2009
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