Why you are wrong about elderly care | Prajakta Wadhavkar | TEDxVITPune
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xPTdkQYas4 Video ID: 3xPTdkQYas4 ============================================================ [Music] Hi, I'm Brajaka Vhavkar. Over the years, I have established elder care community homes across Pune and Maharashtra. Beginning with one resident, now I stand here with an experience of taking care of over 900 elderly residents at my care homes. It started as a small dream but with in-depth research, dedication and expert team. I have this dream has now become my reality. With the changing social landscape actually I could feel the need of elder care homes and organized sector for it because of the growing ratio of elderly population is alarmingly high. The longity of r uh life has increased due to better medical facilities. One of the biggest factor for the need of elder care homes is migration. Um 30 lakh Indians almost are migrating to different countries. their families and parents staying at home in their native places alone. These are most of the factors that have felt the need for organized care home where they could fi find a secured environment. These new age senior citizens now are fiercely independent too. They're financially independent as well as they have a strong sense of space. They also now prefer their own space in some community homes with the company that they want. Nuclear family structure further now isolates them. So for all of us I guess socialization is a basic human need. I felt the need to fulfill it. But in spite of such dire needs the challenge is just as high. The challenges in elder care actually are posed in different societal pressures like fear and guilt where the parents the person as an elderly person also fears s there's a fear of judgment you know and the family members also when one thinks of putting your mother in an elderly care home there's a lot of sense of guilt lot of questions are asked throughout the society with Indian context even the relatives neighbors can also come and ask you questions and put you into guilt. So that also seems to be a biggest challenge. Here actually I help them by counseling to focus on for example for his mother to focus on what that lady actually needs and look at her as an individual. What are her requirements? Does she need company? Does she need daily medical monitoring? and then take a rational decision. Not coming under pressure because times are changing. Fear of abandonment or a sense of uh being looked down upon when your family doesn't care for you is how oldage homes are looked upon. So overall taboo around the word rudasham or old age home still persists. As a social entpreneur I need to change this perception. When I started thinking I went into Indian ancient culture where the concept of vanaprastasham has been there since thousands of years fulfillment of responsibilities by middle age and then on the path of self exploration in ancient culture the uh concept of old age home as in Valhashram actually existed. Could I actually create a modernday vana? That got me thinking. How to look at life beyond retirement. Is there a quality to life beyond retirement? Yes, there is. So careful planning to micro details. I could design care homes for healthy aging fit people who actually were isolated at home or with any other problems or medical problems as well. But in a community care home if they are provided with a secured environment, medical care, good food, the food they like, entertainment. But then for me it goes beyond that. For healthy fit people even after the age of 65 they can be as well as as much productive for the society. Giving them a meaningful purpose enhancing their skills or the line of work that they were in. Giving them a platform definitely helps them as well as the next generations. I could provide that platform for them and um I have like hundreds of experiences and I could share them with you. For example, we had this old lady who approached me uh one day and she voluntarily approached me to stay here as she had just suddenly lost her husband and being a a chief scientist, high achiever, she was fiercely independent and um she never wanted to go and stay with her daughters living abroad. She chose to live with us. And sensing her depression or sadness, I I could observe that she needs much more than that. With her daily routine set in, her favorite hobbies and food, favorite food and everything lined up, I knew she needed more. Being on such a high position, I gave her a challenging activity. I introduced her to origami. This skill actually involves a lot of things you know calculation, hand eye coordination, motor skills and more important a creative mind. She set her mind to that. Every morning I could see her getting competitive every day. She acquired quite a lot of designs. She became so competitive but small prizes, small wins encouraged her. And today without medication she's doing better. her physical health, her mental health is much better. And she's teaching the new generation. I could actually share hundreds of experiences like this. Eventually, um I could actually categorize elder care into three main categories that I'm working in. Healthy, fit, aging people, a care home for them. And then eventually when I came across few changes in the residents changes as in memory issues or loss of balance um cognitive impairment I could actually sense that and I was worried. I actually talked with neurologists and psychiatrists and it all actually directed us towards early symptoms of dementia. Another segregated focused care home was inevitable for that treatment therapies, a secured environment with trained staff. Training becomes vital here. Right from communication skills to understanding their phases of disorientation, aggression, incontinence, etc. was really challenging. But it's been years that my dementia care home is as specialized and we have an innovative approach towards it where we develop therapies more and more uh focused on memory enhancement, skill development where the brain stimulation actually helps them overcome to certain extent. Here there are many many examples but the first hurdle actually becomes acceptance by the family members that yes my father or my mother is actually suffering from some psychological disorder. Right from counseling them from there to getting them accepted the fear and everything the support from family member becomes very important for us to take care of them. It is impossible to take care of elderly people who are undergoing psychological or neurological disorders. They need specialist kind of care. I can say in elder care sector these disorders are on the rise. They need care and now I encourage the gen younger generation to actually contribute to this. The third category very important I can say is paliative care that is end of life care. When one person is uh ill, terminally ill, it could be cancer, it could be some neurological disorder, then they actually decide at one point owing to age or um any other issues that they don't want to go through any aggressive treatments and they want to actually live peacefully for the rest of the days or months. For them paliative care homes are very important for the quality of the life. They still need medical uh monitoring, symptomatic relief, pain management etc. I have a team of paliative care experts and nursing uh nursing care team also here. uh pampering them is one of our major role that I play. Uh right from getting a small orange candy which they loved in their childhood times or a song a particular song or some spiritual uh getaways is something that becomes a part of their care. counseling family members to actually cope up with this situation as uh accepting death as an in inevitable fact of life is something I'm doing on a daily basis also as a holistic approach towards elder care counseling for elderly is also um becoming more rampant we need to counsel them for interpersonal relationship issues where we've seen families getting back together, resolving their issues but through counseling. Um also screen addiction is on the rise with with the elderly people also because of loneliness and because of many other things like children and teenagers. We are counseling. We are having a different rehab program for them also the addiction and uh there's another very important part where counseling helps is building their confidence up for because of when they actually feel down because of physical ailments or surgeries that they have to go through with age. So the holistic approach towards elder care comprises of all these things. Here I feel the challenge is perception. You know what uh like with the satisfaction also there are a lot of challenges while taking care the stress levels are much higher than any other profession. when you see them deterating in front of your eyes because most of these neurological and psychological disorders are progressive still keep taking care of them is something I need to motivate my team for. So I found that the stress management for my team actually would focus on finding small joys in everyday life. If an ailing person actually has a complete meal, we take effort talk to them when while they're having food and they take a complete meal, that is a certificate of achievement for us. a small smile or when her AI has actually lost her memory and her family members visit and she's in a very stable temperament then she might actually recognize them for a bit and that smile on that on her daughter's face is actually a win for us. When a paliotative care patient is carried down to the garden in the morning sun and when she smiles and a twinkle in her eye is an achievement. So we have learned to find small joys in our actions and everyday work. Elder care has actually provided lot of soles and acceptance for me personally. I have actually now created different verticles also with research. There's global research going on surrounding dementia and other neurological disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. We contribute to it. Uh we've designed awareness campaigns for middle-aged people to prepare them for aging and prevent a few factors in hand actually which can prevent such disorders also. We have connected integrated um three generations like we have collaborated with colleges and uh schools corporates to actually educate each other and carry different skill development programs together with the elderly. It has helped them immensely. Not only the elderly, it is helping the new generation as well through training. the vertical with training was inevitable. It was the next step where I had to um train doctors as well to right from communication skills to geriatric pharmacology. Nursing training was again within the organization and around it also we are helping other old age homes as well. So training with students started and I started mentoring few scientists and I got in touch with the new generation. So scientists developing gadgets for the elderly, scientists working with neurosciences, students of architecture designing old age homes or even design students who uh were motivated to design games digitally also for memory enhancement or cognitive impairment. So this is how I'm trying to integrate all the three generations different segments of the society motivating them actually has been emotional process for me as well. I share my experiences how there is immense sense of satisfaction social entrepreneurship has a powerful impact. So one when one really wants to make a difference please do um try and visit old age homes try and learn what they're doing try and bring bring in a innovative perspective is what I motivate them with so with a clear vision commitment and consistency I could create an ecosystem around elder here bridging three generations with empathy, modern technology and which is integrated with culture as well. The line between passion and profession actually never existed for me. Today I can say that approach towards aging is progressively changing. The need for organized holistic elder care has actually surpassed the fear and guilt. Elder care homes are as essential as schools, universities and hospitals in our society. In our today's world, journey of aging is based on emotions, compassion and trust. I hope we take rational decisions for our elder um uh people in the family and eventually for us ourselves as well. Let's all do our bit as I think now elder care is a social responsibility to be looked upon with respect and dignity. Thank you.