Since 1990 Diana Waugh has been a long term care consultant. But that's not really the end of the story. She has been accused of "thinking out of the box" for her entire nursing career!
Regardless of the topic, she sees the problem and the solution from a little different perspective than three-quarters of her colleagues!
Take for instance the work on restraint-freedom. She believes that the reluctance to provide freedom stems from the fact that care providers don't know the residents as social beings.
Then she talks on and on about falls mitigation...saying that knowing what the resident likes to see, smell, taste, touch and hear can be helpful with falls management.
Now she has a program on pain management entitled "Pain Management...It's All About Attitude" (aka "Bullets and Booze") in which she looks at the reasons health care providers don't use the pain management tools available since the days when "Bite on the Bullet" and "Take a shot of this booze" were the pain killer options!
As a matter of fact she thinks the fact that care givers don't focus on the residents as people is a major factor in staff turnover!
Whether speaking or consulting, this out of the box approach is there. She welcomes challenges and enjoys helping facility management and staff see the humor in their foibles! The ability to laugh with providers during the process of learning is one of Diana's greatest assets.
Diana believes her challenge is to set up an environment where the learners ask to learn!
To that end she believes Knowledge, offered with Laughter really IS the best medicine!!