Leading with Heart: A Practical Guide for Memory Care

The book you reach for at six in the morning.Memory care is not hard because the work is complicated. It is hard because the right thing takes patience you do not always have, on a morning that is already behind.This is a field manual for those mornings. Open it to any page. Find the situation you are standing in. Try one thing. See what happens.Forty-five short chapters cover what actually works: - The shower that ends in a fight, and how to end it differently- The four o'clock hour, and what is really causing it- Someone who will not eat, will not sleep, or will not stop walking- When a resident hits you, and what to do in the next ten minutes- The family who is furious, and the one who feels guilty- Pain, the most missed cause of almost everything- Suspicion, accusations, and seeing things that are not there- The first day, the last day, and every hard hour in betweenThen a toolkit of thirty-eight ready-to-use forms, scripts, checklists, huddles, and pocket cards, all sized to photocopy straight out of the book. A life story form. A behavior worksheet. A hundred things to do on a long afternoon. Twelve fifteen-minute team huddles. Words for the conversations nobody trains you for.It is honest about the research, including where the evidence is thinner than the field usually claims, and honest about the parts of this job that wear people down.Written in plain language for caregivers, aides, nurses, and the directors who lead them.See the person. Be the friend. Use skilled hands.