Taking Care of Our Older Adults – Nikkei Senior Gardens

By MICHAEL MOTOYASU, Executive Director, Nikkei Senior Gardens

Nikkei Senior Gardens is a beautiful assisted living retirement community in Arleta, surrounded by scenic landscaping, where residents can live independently while receiving personalized, professional assistance to meet each individual’s changing needs, including a memory support apartment specifically for those with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of memory loss.

Our mission is “to create and sustain an assisted living community where our elders are ensured the enduring right to dignity and respect in a caring environment.”

At Nikkei Senior Gardens, residents can enjoy comfortable apartments, a varied dining menu featuring both Japanese and Western cuisine, regular housekeeping, social and cultural activities, and more. We strive to meet the needs of our residents as best as possible, and we constantly make enhancements to do so.

Taking care of our older adults can mean different things — providing a culturally sensitive environment, nutritious food, or holding activities to keep them socially engaged.

Recently, we were able to renovate our medication station and expand our services, thanks to Keiro’s Grants Program. This renovation has allowed us not only to increase our ability to provide adequate medication management services to residents, but also ensure a safe and consistent quality of life for them as their needs increase.

As older adults live with numerous health conditions, we felt the need to better serve our residents through medication management, and we are grateful for Keiro’s partnership to provide the resources to improve their quality of life. Taking medications is an important part of an older adult’s life and can be most challenging. Studies say that the average older adult takes about seven different medications every day. It’s a complex process and often medication quantities and doses can change from time to time.

In fact, the most common question asked by potential residents’ family members is “What about medicine? Do you manage medication?” We currently manage 75 percent of resident medications.Forgetting or not taking prescribed medications properly can adversely affect how the body is functioning and could potentially make the older adult more susceptible to illness. And many times it’s just that they forget.

It’s critical that older adults take medications exactly as prescribed, and we at Nikkei Senior Gardens make sure that is done for the safety of our residents. Not only does this medication station give residents medications consistently and at the right time, but refills are also handled by staff and therefore will prevent adverse drug events/accidents.

We are grateful for the ongoing partnership with Keiro to support our community’s older adults. Through the support of Keiro’s Grants Program, we know what we are able to better serve our residents’ changing needs. We look forward to our continued collaboration with Keiro so that together we can positively impact the quality of life for our older adults allowing them to focus on what matters most — aging confidently with dignity.

For more information, visit: http://nikkeiseniorgardens.com/