Welcome to Namaste Care
“No long-term care residential
setting should be without Namaste Care...”
- Jan Dougherty, R.N., M.S., Director, Family & Community Services, Banner Alzheimer's Institute
In 2003 I created Namaste Care, a program for people with advanced dementia in nursing facilities. The foundation of this program is "the power of loving touch" and it appears that I underestimated the need all humans have to be touched in a loving way. Since its inception, Namaste Care is now not only in nursing homes but the program can be found in assisted living communities, hospice organizations and the list continues to grow. I recently worked with a younger man in a hospice program who was in the terminal stage of cancer. Just lovingly stroking him on his head and face while telling him what a beautiful man he was helped him drift off to a peaceful sleep. Now, residential care programs are no longer limited to residents with a variety of diseases and conditions such as advanced Parkinson's disease, emphysema, and failure to thrive, it also includes residents who are depressed or just lonely.
The Namaste Carers have shown me that residents in the moderate stage of a dementing illness and who are easily agitated by to much stimulation are calmed by sitting in the Namaste Care room. Even the resident who constantly paces is sometimes drawn into the room by the scent of lavender and soft music and will sit for awhile.
The older I get, the more I realize that not much in life is simply a coincidence. When I happened to be present at the death of a Namaste Care resident Matthew Wilk, his wife Celia urged me to write about her husband's experience in Namaste and the first small article was published. Again, little did I know that this was the seed that grew into a book "The End-of-Life Namaste Care Program for People with Advanced Dementia" published by Health Professions Press.
Namaste Care is now truly international, as I have been invited to speak about Namaste Care in the United States, Asia, Europe, England, and Australia. I have been engaged in a research project with the School of Nursing and Midwifery of the University of Western Sydney. The project is titled "Avoiding 'high tech' through 'high touch' in End Stage Dementia" . The results will be published sometime in 2011. It does not appear to matter what country I am in, people struggle to provide quality of life at the end of life. I have Namaste Care programs in Greece, Australia and will be speaking at St. Christopher's hospice in London in August. One will also start in Scotland this fall.
My latest journey involves working with a hospice organization and adapting Namaste Care to fit, in-patient, and homecare in a patients home or a long-term care facility. That journey has just begun - stay tuned!
I would love to hear from you whether you are looking for a speaker, private consultant or just to let me know how your Namaste Care program is blooming! I am planning to send out something, I'm not sure if it will be a newsletter or just a monthly e-mail to link Namaste Care Program together to share ideas, stories etc. If you would like to be on the distribution list, please email me.
I am also looking for grant money to duplicate the Australian study in my own country. The United States is facing huge cost increases in their Medicare and Medicaid Programs. I know that the number of medications used and inappropriate hospitalizations for people with advanced dementia can be reduced at a significant cost savings to both programs. Of course now I need to gather the data to prove it; thus the need for grant money.
So, the journey continues.
Robert Kennedy once said: "There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"
Please join me in asking "Why not?"
Namaste,
Joyce Simard