Person-Centered Care

Person-Centered Care (PCC) is the common thread running throughout all of ERH's communities and programs. Driven by a desire to exceed normal caregiving practices, PCC provides the tools necessary to interact with people on a higher level of empathy and understanding.

Perhaps the most vivid example of PCC in action is at the nursing care level. Residents choose when to wake up in the morning and when to go to bed at night, when to eat their meals and what they will have when they eat, when to bathe and get dressed, and what activities to participate in each day. In short, residents continue to live with the freedom, choice and purpose they have throughout their lives.

With PCC, the traditional institutional atmosphere is gone, replaced with the creature comforts of home.

PCC is also alive at ERH through our Council for Life Long Engagement (CLLE). Residents participating in this program interact with students at local schools, showing them how things they are learning - math, science and social studies - are applied in careers and daily life when they get older. At the same time, they battle ageism by showing that getting older and retiring doesn't necessarily mean people slow down! You can learn more about CLLE by visiting its web page.

Our staff members use the philosophy of Person-Centered Care in their interactions with one another, and have learned to think of our workplace as someone's home rather than a nursing care facility. It is a change in mindset, but we have seen so many examples of improvement in our residents' outlook that we know we're heading in the right direction.

Person-Centered Care allows ERH staff to provide a level of freedom and personal choice previously not practiced in a nursing care environment. When a person is allowed to make choices, and to approach each day with purpose and meaning, the result is truly remarkable. It is what sets ERH communities apart from the rest.