Rebecca Sullivan is the Health & Wellness Director at Columbia Place Assisted Living, overseeing the community’s care team, ensuring each resident is receiving the care they need to thrive and live life to the fullest.
After spending 16 years as a school bus driver, she became a nurse and opted for a career where she’d be working with people at the other end of the age spectrum. She’s been at Columbia Place since January after a decade of working in hospital settings.
Get to know Rebecca in this interview!
What is it that you enjoy about working with seniors?
“One of the things that I love the best is the stories. When I go out and do assessments, that’s probably my favorite part of this job. I go and meet these perfect strangers and they kind of look at me funny at first. But, I just say, ‘I want to know about you. I want to know who you are, what you’ve done. How many kids do you have? What do they do?’ I try to make it really personal and then it’s super cool to hear about their stories and learn about these residents and the way they’ve impacted the world.”
How do you help with a new resident’s transition to the community?
“My goal is to try to get in there on day one, if not day two, because there’s certain things we have to do, get their vital signs, their weight, have them sign their service plan, and then we have a 30-day evaluation that we have to do. I always tell the resident it’s the honeymoon period, where we’re getting to know each other, and see if the service plan we started with is still appropriate. Today for instance, I spent an hour with a new resident who hasn’t been here quite a month, but her service plan needed to be totally updated because of a change of condition for the better for her.”
How do you ensure each resident in the community is getting the care and attention they need?
“A lot of times it’s with checking in with their family, and then I’m out in the community quite a bit. I rarely sit at my desk. I’m out talking to the staff. We instituted a huddle, so when shift change comes, we all get in the room and ask each other, which resident are acting differently? Did anybody have any issues? Are there some new skin issues that we need to be watching? Any new behaviors? Those sorts of things.”
How do you help plan and execute care for the memory care residents?
“One of the things to keep in mind is that people have dementia, but they’re not all at the same level. You have some who are high-functioning, you’ve got others who are end stage. What I want the staff to do is divvy up the residents based on their level and provide appropriate activities for them. Some people can still crochet, and then other people, we’re just going to color today. And so why make the people that can crochet still just color?”
Do you have a success story with a resident that you’re particularly proud of?
“We have a resident who’d lived with us previously, but moved home and had home health coming to see her. She had to be sent out to the hospital for some pretty bad wounds that had developed and deteriorated, and she needed more acute care. She absolutely loves it here and wanted to do everything possible to come back.
She came back with five wounds that were pretty significant and needed watching all the time. Between myself, the staff, the resident and her family, we had everything coordinated and I’m happy to say that she came back about two months ago and has only one wound left, and that was the worst one.
She was on the brink where she wasn’t going to get to come back and she was very unhappy about that. She really wanted to come home and be here. Now she’s excited and happy that that one wound is almost gone and she can probably get back involved with physical and occupational therapy, which furthers her strength and mobility.”