Nursing Home Institutionalism

Nursing homes should have policies that allow their residents to make more decisions. Allowing their residents to make more decisions will help them to decrease their chance of institutionalism. These policies should include meal options instead of only having one option for a meal or to not eat. I believe that nursing homes should have at least three separate meal options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This would be beneficial for the residents to establish their independence more. It would also increase the resident’s nutritional needs because they would probably eat more if they enjoyed each meal.
Nursing homes should also allow residents to choose their activities and what time they can perform those activities. By selecting the activities, the residents would increase the enrichment in their life and their physical activity. This is beneficial to maintain physically active and possibly prolong their life. It would also be beneficial for the residents to be able to select the times that they would like to perform their activities or have their meals. Obviously the nursing homes must still function and cannot accommodate every request. It would be helpful if the residents could chose certain two hour time blocks for certain things. Some residents do not want to wake up at seven in the morning. If the resident could chose a different time they would be able to either start their day early or sleep in. This would also change their meal time and possibly their activity times. This would give the residents more independence and help to prevent institutionalism.
Even though these policies would be very beneficial to residents, nursing homes do not normally implement them. These policies are relatively uncommon due to the cost that they would create and because of staffing. Nursing homes are often understaffed and it would be very inefficient for staff members to implement these policies. Normally staff awake residents in order of their rooms by hallways. The...