Everyone wants to plan ahead. Sometimes you have a parent trying to prevent a crisis, but if something happens, you want to be prepared. Though life care professionals like to help people prevent a crisis, helping families navigate a crisis is the nature of their work. Lisa Mayfield, CEO and founder of Aging Wisdom, joins Suzanne to talk about how life care professionals help.
Lisa says, “I think the first thing is knowing that there are people like us. And even though we love to help people prevent crisis, crisis is really the nature of our work. So that’s what we’re doing, day in and day out, is helping families navigate these situations and they’re typically a fall. A parent falls, they end up in the hospital because they broke a hip. So families are needing help: how do I navigate the hospital? Hospital stays are so much more confusing these days. You might never see the doctor, the discharge planner is a different one every day… You don’t know what to ask. You don’t know who to ask… They’ll make recommendations but they don’t explain what it means. So, helping families navigate that whole hospital stay. But then also helping them figure out what happens next, if rehab is recommended. Why would that be a good thing? Why would you do it? How do you find one? What will happen then? And how much will your insurance pay?”
Lisa adds, “I’m working with a wife right now whose husband had just landed in the hospital. He’s now in rehab. She really wants him to come home. He’s not yet walking again after a significant fall, where he hit his head on the floor. At [home], they have a lot of stairs to navigate. So, is that going to be realistic? And if you really want to make that work, what are we gonna need to do to the home to get [him] more help? So [we’re] helping her navigate those options and those difficult decisions. Because if you’re at a point where your spouse or partner can’t come home, that’s devastating and heartbreaking, and the adult children might not agree. This is a family where there’s stepchildren. Then you’re dealing with stepchildren and the current wife, and they might be at odds at what should happen. So [we’re] helping families really make tough choices and navigate when they’re not on the same page.”
Aging Life Care Association
Aging Wisdom website
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