PREVENTION. PREDICTION. EDUCATION.
manner with flexibility, so employees don’t feel overwhelmed and don’t forget the information they learned. This has been essential in the level of preparedness that Thrive employees have. Pushed timelines or overwhelming amounts of training “is not as impactful, or doesn’t stick, or they rush through and don’t retain it,” D’Antonio says. “We have this expression at Thrive: You
have this freedom in the framework of your leadership to say what works best for the community, the clientele, and the team members and their learning styles. So we really do give people the ability to be flexi- ble, but there’s still a cutoff.”
VITALITY LIVING Encouraging a culture of readiness It always impresses Syndell Lawhon, vice president of wellness at Vitality Living, that team members are always ready to mobilize and to help each other during an emergency. “The frontline staff and the caregivers are
fantastic about loading up their bags and going with the residents to make sure they are taken care of,” she says. “When you think that they’re probably leaving their home, which could have dam-
age, and going with the residents because they’re so concerned, it really just warms your heart. Consistently, every time, they show up and do what needs to be done to take care of residents,” Lawhon says. There’s a lot of prep work that’s done.
We’re always watching the weather, so we can call the staff and say, ‘Hey, are you will- ing to come in and stay in case other people can’t get in?’ during the heat of the storm and hands down, they always respond. It’s just really an amazing group of people.” It is also a reflection of a training pro-
gram that prepares the staff to rise to the occasion. Vitality offers online training tailored toward assisted living communities and focused on helping employees under- stand what they need to know during an emergency, such as the difference between a warning and a watch, strategies for get- ting residents away from windows and into secure spaces in the building, or ways to evacuate behind fire doors. Although most of the modules employees complete are the same from one communi- ty to the next, there are some differences, depending on location—Vitality has com- munities in nine states. In addition, employees participate in regu- lar drills, which help the provider evaluate the
quality of training. These drills also provide a chance to immediately course correct if there are any shortfalls in employee response. Lawhon explains: “The way training is
reinforced is, say you have a fire drill and someone doesn’t respond appropriately, or it takes 15 minutes to get the residents from one section behind the three-hour firewall. we would do on-the-spot training, and then quickly after that follow up with another drill to see, ‘Hey, did we do better?’” Doing better with training is consistently
a priority. Whether in response to industry changes, updates to regulations, or lessons learned after a real evacuation, the organi- zation strives to keep the training fresh and relevant. Training has also become more efficient through using online modules for required annual training. “I think the online version has helped quite a bit, because it’s very consistent, it’s delivered in a way people are used to receiv- ing information now, and people can do it at their own pace,” says Lawhon. “There are real-life scenarios in the vid-
eos and examples. I think it’s a very good platform—rather than having someone standing there with a script that they’ve read for the past five years, telling you the same thing. It’s much more engaging.”
Resident Actions Are Also Critical to Effective Disaster Training By Kenya McCullum
At Thrive Senior Living, residents regularly participate in drills, so they’re prepared during emergency events. These drills can range from ensuring that residents can get to a fire-safe area of the building to an annual full-evacuation drill, says Elaine D’Antonio, Thrive’s vice president of clinical and compliance.
For residents, participating in fire drills may not mean physically moving—if someone is already in a fire-safe area, they might stay in place. “But you have to be accounted for,” D’Antonio says. Staff makes sure all residents know there’s a fire drill going on and talk through the scenario of what action the resident might be involved in.
Although residents are not required to evacuate during every drill at Thrive, D’Antonio says they are engaged in the process and want to be kept in the loop of the safety information they’ll need in the event of a real emergency.
24 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE MAY/JUNE 2022
They also want to know how effective the drills are in their communities, so they can contribute to helping improve the process as needed.
“Our residents are really concerned with their safety in the sense of how we’re performing and doing fire drills. At a lot of communities that I’ve been in firsthand performing fire drills, our residents are completely informed and completely involved,” says Michael Patrick, property experience market lead at Thrive.
“They want to know the follow-up. They want to say, ‘Hey, I don’t like the way that this happened. Maybe I would have rather moved to the other exit. What can we do next time to help the process?’”
We have a very open and honest discussion about how drills go and what their involvement is in the drills as well.”
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