A Salute to the Long-Term Care Division of Johnson & Johnson

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• The Mental Health Toolkit
• Caregiver Support
• Copyright

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• Dr. Barbara Resnick

It is with a heavy heart that I write to acknowledge the work of the Long-Term Care Division of Johnson & Johnson. Because of the many changes in health care and pharmaceutical regulations, Johnson & Johnson has decided to downsize their long-term care division. Overall Johnson & Johnson will be cutting their operating costs by 15% and consequently will reduce their workforce by 4% such that 4,800 employees will be displaced. The Johnson & Johnson Long-Term Care staff will decrease from 17 individuals to 2 representatives for the whole country and will consequently not be able to have the level of focus, commitment, and involvement that we have come to know. However, they will continue some liaisons with a few selected organizations dedicated to the care of older adults.

Regardless of personal opinions and thoughts about the pharmaceutical industry, the work of the Johnson & Johnson team focused on Long-Term Care deserves to be acknowledged. For approximately the last 10 years, members of the Long-Term Care division of Johnson & Johnson have worked closely with NCGNP and other nursing organizations to provide education across a broad continuum of clinical topics. We have, through their support, been able to develop innovative programs that focused on important clinical problems such as falls and fall prevention; mental health issues, including differentiating delirium, dementia, and depression; and the recognition and management of anemia. When we spoke as nurses focused on care of older adults, Johnson & Johnson Long-Term Care division experts listened. We brought ideas forward, and they listened and helped us turn those ideas into realities. Their support and enthusiastic responses have helped us all grow as geriatric nurses. They provided us with the confidence that our ideas were credible and fundable and that we could, working together, make an impact on the education and care practices of nurses and other caregivers. I want to take a few moments to address a few of the specific projects we worked on together to reiterate once again our thanks and appreciation.

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The Mental Health Toolkit 

Although transitions of care are the hot topic these days, many of us know that these transitions are complicated by the challenges we all face in working with older adults. One such challenge is differentiating delirium, dementia, and depression. The Mental Health Toolkit was initially supported by the Hartford 5-year initiative funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies (USA) Inc. (September 2002) to the American Nurses Association through the American Nurses Foundation. The purpose of the development of the NCGNP Mental Health Toolkit for Assessing and Managing Mental Health Changes in Older Adults was to provide nurses (licensed practical nurses, registered nurses with or without a baccalaureate degree, and advanced practice nurses) with a practical, step approach to evaluating these individuals. Use of this toolkit was intended to help nurses in all settings to establish a plan of care appropriately for these individuals and help them obtain and maintain their highest level of cognitive function and overall health and well-being. We shared this project with the Johnson & Johnson Long-Term Care Division leaders, and they got it! They were willing to support the production of the Toolkit as a high-quality spiral-bound book of which we produced 500 copies. In addition, the Johnson & Johnson support allowed us to develop, through the help of Hybrid Publishers, a Web version of the Toolkit that we could make available to all interested through open access on the NCGNP Web page.

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Caregiver Support 

Another successful project many of us will recall was our Family and Caregiver Conversations Program. This joint venture between NCGNP and Johnson & Johnson followed many conversations about the importance of educating caregivers about dementia. Repeatedly we expressed our concerned that it was often the caregivers—across all levels of care—who determined whether older adults would seek help related to memory changes or be willing to engage in any type of treatment option. All too often, caregivers were not even aware of what the treatment options were. Our goal was to reach out to caregivers in the home, assisted living, and long-term care settings and help these individuals better understand the options for diagnosis and management of dementia. For those of us who participated in this program, each presentation was an amazing experience. Caregivers were enlightened, as were we, when each caregiver shared his or her special story. Again, Johnson & Johnson Long-Term Care Division listened to our educational needs as health care providers and responded.

These initiatives are just a couple of examples of specific projects. We cannot forget Johnson & Johnson’s support of a wide range of additional educational programs at conferences and through manuscript development. In addition to supported symposiums at our meetings, Johnson & Johnson has provided the resources to develop enduring materials such as the Anemia Monograph we produced. Furthermore, the Long-Term Care Division has been behind the support and development of many journals we receive such as ElderCare. These educational tools not only provide critical clinical information in an unbiased fashion, they also bring together numerous disciplines. In so doing, there is evidence and support for the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in the care of older adults. This type of support has had a major impact on facilitating opportunities for nurses to work with colleagues in medicine and pharmacy in particular.

Johnson & Johnson Long-Term Care Division, we salute you in these final days and thank you for all you have done for geriatrics, nursing, and the older adults for whom we care. We look forward to continued endeavors in this new era. We hope that Johnson & Johnson as a company will continue to support a focus on older adults and include these individuals in their research endeavors; maybe one day we will see a new “Long-Term Care Division” emerge that crosses all sites of service and leads the way in combining nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic management of clinical problems in older adults. We thank each and every member of the Long-Term Care Division for their help and support and wish them all luck as they engage in new endeavors, building from their skills in geriatrics, long-term care, and what we have pounded in their heads about nursing! Kudos, thanks, and we salute you.