THE EDEN ALTERNATIVE:

Implications for Empowerment and Teamwork

Presented by:
Amit Kumar
Ganesh
Hina Bajpai
Kirti Gupta
U.Prabir Jaiswal
CASE STUDY
Dr. William Thomas, the sole physician and
medical director for Chase Memorial Nursing
Home realized that nursing homes usually foster 3
plagues of nursing homes:
 loneliness
 helplessness
 Boredom

The Eden Alternative is a different holistic approach

to a long term nursing care. The basic philosophy
is to create a ‘human habitat’ where residents
thrive, grow and flourish.
The mission of Eden Alternative is ‘to improve the
well being of elders and those who care for them
by transforming the communities in which they live
and work’.

David Zimmerman, director of The Centre for

Health System Research says: ‘primary benefit
and greatest challenge of Eden Alternative is that
it involves truly fundamental change in entire
culture of facility, the interaction between
management and staff, staff and each resident’.

Central to the implementation is building and

empowering staff for total commitment and
participation in the project.
Edenization is an ongoing process, empowering staff
particularly frontline care givers. The team looks
for problems and solutions.
It requires attitudinal and organizational
transformation on the part of staff and
organization. Initially the staff members reacted
negatively.
But Dr. Thomas kept pushing the Edenization
concept: resistance gradually diminished and staff
began to embrace the concept.
It is replacing top down bureaucratic management
with decision making authority in the hands of the
frontline staff. Since it empowered staff members
examine recent needs and how best to meet them.
Moving beyond basic Edenization
 Green House Project is new initiative undertaken
by Eden Alternative.

 Green house project is direct reflection of Eden

Alternative principles and has special relevance to
transformation and management of elder care
facility.

 Here an elder-centered community honors its elders

by de-emphasizing top down authority and places
maximum possible decision making authority in
the hands of elders.
 Green house is a group home for elders built to
residential scale that provide necessary clinical
care within a social model in which primacy is
given to the elder’s quality of life.

 It operates differently from traditional nursing

homes. It places decision as close to elders as
possible, thereby giving them greater control of
their lives.

 Adopting this alternative in long term, will

provide management and leadership challenge to
staff members and house councils.
Question 1 :-

Explain why teamwork is important for the

effective implementation of the Eden
Alternative.
 Empowering staff, particularly frontline
caregivers is at the heart of the Eden Alternative.

 The initial reaction was that the staff reacted

negatively to embrace Edenization.

 It is due to the team work that resistance

gradually diminished and everyone started
showing participation and commitment in the
project.
 Goal
- collective performance

Synergy
- positive
WORK TEAMS
Accountability
- Individual & mutual

Skills
- complementary
Question 2 :-

Explain the relevance of empowerment

and self managed teams to the Green
House Project.
Question 3:-

Discuss the extent to which the

characteristics of well functioning,
effective groups accurately describe the
Edenized facilities discussed in the case
Solution
Group – A group is defined as two or more
individuals,interacting and interdependent, who have
come together to achieve particular objective.

Characteristics of well-funtioning group

Members are skilled – members of the team were
doctors and nurses and were well skilled
Purpose is well defined – here the purpose was to
creat a human habitat where residents thrive,
grow and flourish.
Free to take Decisions – here the frontline staffs
were free to take decisions.
Continued…..

 Responsibility - Multidisciplinary teams were formed

and given responsibility

 Norms – flexble staffing policies were used to support

an emphasis on work team.

 Members are highly motivated

 High degree of confidence

THANK YOU