In pediatrics it is well known that touch is extremely important for children. Babies and infants who are not touched – held and cuddled – fail to thrive.
In failure to thrive, children don’t eat well, they are thin, listless, and delayed on their developmental milestones.
This failure to thrive is also seen in elderly persons as well. We see it in nursing home patients who don’t get visitors.
We see failure to thrive in older persons with prolonged hospital stays who don’t or can’t get visitors.
We see failure to thrive in patients with dementia, even if it is mild, when they don’t see a familiar face for a prolonged time.
In some cases, the dementia wasn’t even diagnosed, it was so mild. But the social isolation ‘unmasked’ the dementia, and it progressed rapidly in conjunction with failure to thrive.
With the new visitation policies in nursing homes brought about by the COVID19 pandemic, failure to thrive is going to become more prevalent. We are already seeing it.
If we don’t find ways to continue to interact with our older friends and family, we will loose a lot of them, not to COVID19, but to failure to thrive.
Families may now want to rethink putting older loved ones in nursing homes. Some people have already taken their loved ones out of nursing homes.
This may all end up being a bit more expensive and inconvenient but it could literally be a matter of life or death.
Life may be more challenging in some ways now – loss of income, etc. but in other ways it may be simpler – less places to go, working from home, etc.
Keeping a loved one out of a nursing home could end up being much better for all involved.
Do you have any ideas on how families can safely engage older relatives during this new COVID19 era? Please share below!
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See associated video post here: https://youtu.be/0QTWPaAW1Vs
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