Daily Routine: Consistency and Flexibility

The Series: Elements of Planning and Coordinating Successful Activities
1. Daily Routine: Consistency and Flexibility

“What are we going to do today?” This is the question from some of our clients every morning.

Our morning starts with socialization with coffee/tea and small breakfast, followed by sharing current news and 45-minutes exercise. Date and time orientation is necessary to start our day with clients. Our staff and clients complete our fill-in-the-blank white board together while clients finish their breakfast.

Various afternoon activities are accompanied by physical stimulation (e.g., physical games, outdoor stroll, etc) in order to keeping them alert after lunch. We occasionally switch morning routine from afternoon routine due to some inevitable reasons (e.g., entertainment, cooking and baking schedule, guests, etc). We call the switched day as “the Backwards Day.” Excepting the backwards day, we try to follow our daily routine.

It is important to consistent with our daily routine at our Day Care Center. The first reason is that our clients with memory impairments tend to feel comfortable to follow set-up basic routine. They would be panic when the routine changes subjectively. The panic and confusion can be avoided by reassuring them repeatedly.

The second reason is that some clients with higher cognitive functioning remember and expect to enjoy the activity mentioned on the calendar. We don’t have to disappoint them by changing activities without mentioning to them.

However, it is also essential, I believe, being flexible regarding planning and coordinating activities. As nobody knows what will happen next with memory impaired clients, unexpected incidents or happenings could occur. Here is the time that flexibility comes in. When planned activities need to be switched from one to another, we respect our clients and tell them immediately if possible.

For instance, we plan to do baking activity after lunch; however, one client has an emergency at lunch table. Before the panic attacks the rest of our clients, we immediately call the paramedic to take care of the client and switch from the original plan of baking to sing-a-long activity in the other room in order to distract them and have a quiet moment until an emergency is taken care of. Emergency scenes need to be taken away from the rest of the group.

Or sometime, the day just doesn’t work at all with anything. It could be because of clients’ mood and frequent care in the bathroom and so on. Staff members’ frustrations to handle with these emergencies are very contagious to clients. Then we can be flexible to do something more calm, mellow, and therapeutic (e.g. coloring, short movies, sing-a-long, trivia, etc).

Due to being consistent with some levels and flexible towards our daily routine, at the end of the day, clients fortunately forget our hectic moment at the Center but remember their laughter from happy activities.