How nurses are reimagining aging in place

For Cami Peterson-Dabrees, DHA, AGNP, LNHA, MSN, Vice President of Senior Services for St. Francis Health Services in Morris, Minnesota, a better future for aging starts with changing how we think about long-term care.

Over the course of her career, Peterson-Dabrees has watched nursing homes move away from a traditional medical model built around nursing stations, long hallways and hospital-like environments toward a more social model focused on helping people thrive.

“It is really a model where people should thrive and be able to be their best with the support of having their physical needs met,” she said. “We’re building on people’s strengths versus their weaknesses.”

That means thinking beyond an older adult’s medical needs to consider relationships, routines and the connections that make someone feel at home.

Delivering that kind of care is increasingly challenging as long-term care organizations contend with workforce shortages, funding constraints and gaps in access to basics like nutritious food and medication. For Peterson-Dabrees, those pressures make finding new ways to work even more important.

Across the senior living communities Peterson-Dabrees oversees, technology is helping her team make better use of limited resources.

Robot floor scrubbers free staff from repetitive tasks. Automated kitchens and service robots support meal delivery. Smart-room technology helps residents connect with family members who live far away.

The goal is not to replace people. It is to create more capacity for the work that requires human connection, expertise and judgment.

“If staff use AI, it doesn’t take the place of nursing practice and nursing decision making, and so you have to be pretty clear on that,” Peterson-Dabrees said.

And introducing technology is only part of the challenge. Peterson-Dabrees developed a readiness tool her organization uses every six months to identify champions and understand where teams need more support adopting new tools.

Technology is also creating new possibilities for older adults who want to remain in their own homes.

Roschelle “Shelly” Fritz, PhD, RN, FAAN, a professor at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, studies sensors, wearables and other technologies that can recognize changes in behavior that may signal a change in health. Her research looks at how those signals could help enable earlier intervention while allowing older adults to remain independent.

Her guiding principle is straightforward:

“Leave the power with the older adults. Let them have their power; they deserve it.”

That means designing technology that works in the background rather than asking people to constantly monitor another device or think about their health.

Fritz’s research focuses on passive, unobtrusive monitoring that could detect a fall without requiring someone to press an emergency button or recognize changes in everyday behavior that may signal a developing health problem.

“We hope that older adults feel like when they’re in their own home that it’s just their home, and they can focus on being well and doing what they want to do,” Fritz said.

For Shu-Fen Wung, PhD, MS, RN, ACNP-BC, FAAN, a professor at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis, that same technology can support the people caring for older adults, too. Wung studies wearables, digital health tools and AI-embedded sensors, including radar sensors designed to detect falls.

The potential is personal. Wung’s mother is frail, and her brother stays home because he worries she may fall when she is alone. Technology that can reliably detect those moments could help older adults remain independent while giving caregivers greater confidence to step away.

Wung said her hope is to develop technology that allows “caregivers could have the peace of mind to be able to live their own life. That’s meaningful to me.”