By: Ashley Strehl - Managing Editor of Print and Digital Publications
Restorative therapy can mean more than restoring the physical health of the residents within a long-term care community. It can also mean restoring their minds, souls, and confidence too, especially for Restorative Therapist at Oak Hills Care Center and Skyview Nursing Center, Kentrell Rose.
Rose has been the Restorative Therapist at Oak Hills Care Center for three years and has been doing restorative therapy at Skyview Nursing Center since Voyage Long Term Care took management of the long-term care community over one and a half years ago.
Rose practices Restorative Therapy with various residents between Oak Hills Care Center and Skyview Nursing Center five days a week. Rose states that he takes on other responsibilities as well and can work wherever he is needed. “Basically, whoever has their hand out that need’s grabbing, I’m going to grab it,” Rose said. On Saturdays, Rose spends the day back in his roots, performing maintenance as a Care Area Tech for Oak Hills Care Center.
While he also pays credit to his experience for his skills, Rose believes that caring for others has always been a part of him, even before his first job as a Care Area Tech within a skilled nursing facility. “My entire family, ever since my grandmother, has worked in healthcare,” Rose said.
Rose stated that his grandmother worked at Skyview Nursing Center for more than 40 years, followed by his mother and aunt, who got their start in healthcare at Skyview Nursing Center as well. “I watched my mom and my aunt in healthcare since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I wanted to be a computer analyst, but it just so happened that one of my first jobs was performing as a Floor Tech at a long-term care center. The Administrator of the facility, at that time, told me that he thought I was so great with the residents because it was in my blood. I thought to myself, ‘Well, he’s right, it is!’ so here I am.” Rose has now been working in healthcare for over 15 years.
Throughout the years, Rose has met and worked with many different types of residents but says that he will never forget the patient that he worked with who was admitted to the facility with debilitating burns over 90% of his body. “I think I was two or more years into working in healthcare at that time,” Rose said. “It was one of the toughest things I had seen. The doctors told him he would never walk or talk again. He was on my unit, so, I tried my best to do range-of-motion type exercises with him every day when I would go into feed or bathe him. I would also talk to him, just to let him know that he is not alone. I asked the facilities therapists for advice on the distinct types of things that I could do with him within my spectrum. One day his foot twitched, and then one foot twitch turned into the whole leg. In about six months I had him sitting up on the side of the bed, moving his arms, turning his head and being more mobile. Then we worked on speech and did different tongue exercises advised to me by different therapists. It just completely took off. Within 8 or 9 months, he began eating pureed foods. In the next year he was walking around the facility, and then he got to go home.”
This experience taught Rose an important lesson in never giving up and always having hope, no matter what. “I always tell my patients, clients, residents, if you have the will, determination, self-preservation, and the Lord’s will behind you, there’s nothing that you can’t do,” Rose said. “You can always overcome anything. It’s not about the end goal it’s about everything you have to go through to get there.”
Rose says that his biggest goal when doing therapy with a resident is that they have fun. “Whatever the residents are into, I try to come up with a way where I can implement that into therapy,” Rose said. “If they are doing something they like to do, it will take their mind off of the fact that it is therapy.” Rose also states that the biggest part of his therapy is making sure that the residents laugh. “Laughter is good for the soul,” Rose said. “You got to laugh to keep yourself from hurting. Me and the residents are always clowning around because I want to keep them smiling and laughing. With everything that is going on today, we need laughter."
"At the end of the day, that is what makes it worth it, because I know I touched them, not just physically during therapy, but also spiritually and mentally, too.”
- Kentrell Rose, Restorative Therapist