Long-Term Care Survey Alert

View the cup as half full rather than half empty.

If staff tends to classify residents as either continent or not, your facility may be missing out on an opportunity to tout its quality improvements to surveyors and consumers.

Say you find out a resident is wet eight times a day based on the bladder diary, postulates Shara Stodola, RN, director of nursing for Bordeaux Long Term Care in Nashville, TN. And you develop an individualized toileting plan that initially reduces the incontinent episodes to four a day. "That resident has experienced a 50 percent reduction in incontinence," she says.

Bordeaux is, in fact, looking for a concise way to report that kind of data, says Stodola. In any case, the facility celebrates successes in regaining continence in a respectful way with the resident/family and staff.

Editor's note: How is your facility measuring and reporting residents' improvements in this crucial area of care? Please send your ideas and success stories to the editor at EditorMON@aol.com. Long-Term Care Survey Alert will pass along the suggestions (with or without your facility's name, as you prefer) for a future roundup of tips and strategies on urinary continence management.