Essential Skills for Assisted Living Caregivers: Using Communication to Improve Quality of Life

One of the primary reasons that residents move into senior living is because they aren’t active at home and tend to withdraw from their favorite activities. 

Even when older adults don’t live alone, they still experience high rates of loneliness.

This underscores the importance of effective communication skills for assisted living caregivers—and all staff interacting with residents. 

Every interaction, from inviting a resident to participate in an activity to helping them with a shower, requires a delicate approach to communication. Caregivers have to understand how to listen effectively to their residents and also:

• Explain in simple terms what they are hoping to do together
• Go through each step with the resident and ensure comfort
• Anticipate needs before, during, and after each task

Now, let’s go over the importance of communication and cultural competency and how to ensure your training and continuing education curriculum includes these essential skills.

This section includes:

• What is communication?
• The 4 type of caregiver communication styles
• Strategies to improve caregiver communication
• Cultural competency and communication

What is Communication?

“Having courage and confidence in communication is also important,” added Dr. Reddy. 

This is only possible when your team meets and accommodates the various communication styles that work best for your caregivers. 

There are four basic communication styles: 

• Aggressive communication is a style of communication that involves expressing oneself in a way that reflects, in real-time, the depth that someone else is feeling their emotions. When someone with this style of communication feels upset or disturbed, they will often criticize or blame others, use profanity, and interrupt others. 
• Passive communication involves avoidance and individuals tend to hold back in expressing their opinions or feelings. Because they may keep important information to themselves, others may not know what they need or want. People who use this communication style tend to use “I” statements, fear negative consequences, speak softly, and avoid eye contact. 
• Passive-aggressive communication is a blend of the first two styles, appearing passive in nature while being used in a manipulative way. People who use this communication style tend to avoid confrontation, use sarcasm, and often feel powerless. 
• Assertive communication is used when an individual expresses themselves honestly while still respecting the rights of others. This is the style of communication that we encourage all individuals to use, and people tend to state their needs and feelings appropriately, avoid interrupting, maintain eye contact, and feel connected to others. 

Consider taking note of how caregivers (and applicants) talk as they go through interviews or orientation, how they interact with residents to better understand their communication styles—and how to further coach and mentor them to be the best caregivers they can be.

Strategies to Improve Caregiver Communication Skills

Communication is something that we all do every day. The importance of communication, as it relates to your caregivers, is helping them:

• Find ways to honor the lives of their residents
• Promote resident's sense of belonging and purpose
• Identify new or unique ways to advocate for residents

There are four key parts of effective communication that your caregivers are responsible for as they create a healthy and safe environment to care for residents. Additionally, these are important traits for you to keep in mind, to demonstrate leadership and skills from the top: 

1. Verbal communication: This emphasizes the importance of speaking clearly, while remaining calm. 
2. Non-Verbal communication: When done properly, body language can encourage more open communication with residents. 
3. Being a good listener: Your ability to talk to and communicate with a resident hinges upon your ability to listen to what they say and employ active listening. This means being open-minded, not interrupting, and to be able to repeat back what the person said.
4. Asking questions

Here are some best practices for caregiver communication with residents—and these can help you evolve your own relationships with residents. This can help as you mentor and demonstrate leadership to caregivers as well:

• Encourage caregivers to review each resident’s care plan before they start their shift. This can help establish a routine for the caregiver while refreshing their mind of what each resident needs and how they can tailor their work to this person’s preferences, hobbies, and more. 
• Ensure that caregivers properly introduce themselves when meeting residents for the first time and continually reintroduce themselves until they have established a relationship. That includes stating first and last names, wearing name tags in a clearly visible location, and offering a firm handshake. Lastly, but certainly not least, make sure they smile!
• Make sure that caregivers knock and announce themselves when they enter a resident’s apartment. Although caregivers may work in a community, they should treat the environment as someone else’s home. It gives the resident a chance to greet someone, prepare themselves for upcoming care, ask any questions they might have, and to let someone know if they have laundry or trash that needs to be taken out. Without knocking and properly introducing themselves, caregivers can disrupt a resident’s routine, and sometimes, scare them if they’re caught off-guard. 

Reinforce the importance of maintaining proper eye contact. Did you know that 93% of communication is nonverbal? This can help residents, especially if they’re hearing-impaired, and to feel like they are a part of a two-way discussion instead of being talked at. “Eye contact tells someone that you are listening and that you mean what you say,” adds Dr. Reddy.

Cultural Competency in Communication

What is a culture? According to Dr. Reddy, a culture is “a set of values, beliefs, and behavior that we learn from others of a group.” This doesn’t just apply to your personal life. It’s also living and breathing within your senior living community.

Your caregivers may notice differences between their own culture and those of their residents. It can come off as strange, weird, or even inappropriate. Rather than thinking in binary ways of right versus wrong or good versus bad, caregivers have to learn and accept that there are different ways of thinking. 

Rather than expecting caregivers to know all of the different cultural nuances that exist, it’s better to reinforce that your caregivers understand that some older adults’ behaviors and beliefs may be different from their own. 

To help your caregivers create more positive connections with residents:

• Avoid the use of stereotypes. As an example, not all older adults are weak or confused. 
• Take the time to learn about the cultures of residents. You don’t have to be an expert, but understanding their preferences for eye contact or learning a few words in their native language can go a long way.

Help your caregivers see the best in each resident by incorporating Cultural Competency training in your onboarding and education curriculum.

Essential skills foster quality relationships for caregivers and residents

Seeing caregivers form relationships with their residents is a beautiful thing. 

You and your team have the ability to affect change and increase that dynamic by demonstrating effective communication from the top, and reinforcing that behavior with effective training. 

Don’t take our word for it; listen to Tera Rudloff, the Vice President of Clinical and Education at WindRiver Pinnacle Groves, “This focused education has improved our communication skills and caregiving techniques, leading to a marked enhancement in our residents' quality of life and overall well-being.”

Empower your team to be the best they can be with these tips. At CareAcademy, we are working with industry experts to craft content tailored for all senior living staff, with a specific course, “Professionalism: Communication, Problem Solving & Cultural Competency.”

To see our classes in action, start your trial of Care Academy today.