He searches for the word, the carer guesses and gets it wrong: the magnetic card on the fridge tells the new carer that Marc understands everything and just needs to be given time
A magnetic card on the fridge, scanned by the new carer before she has even taken off her coat, and she knows that Marc understands every sentence, that he is searching for his words, and that it is better to give him time than to finish his sentences for him.
This case is about a 58-year-old man with aphasia after a stroke. The profile is prepared by his partner, and it is meant for the home carers who take turns at his house, often without meeting or passing on much to one another.
The moment as it is lived
Nine in the morning, the smell of coffee still in the kitchen. Marc is sitting at the table, his hand resting on his cup. The carer who pushes the door open this morning is not the one from yesterday: the service rotates, this is Amina, and it is her first visit. She asks him if he slept well. Marc opens his mouth, the word does not come, he gestures towards the window and insists. Amina thinks he wants to go out and tells him it is too early. That was not it. He meant that the shutter had stayed down.
His partner has stuck a magnetic card on the fridge door, just above the logbook that every carer signs on arrival. Amina scans it. She reads what his partner wrote: Marc understands everything said to him, his intelligence is intact, it is only that speech no longer comes out as it used to. Words get stuck, especially when he is rushed. What helps is being spoken to normally, adult to adult, and being given time.
The morning changes pace. Amina asks questions that can be answered with yes or no. When Marc stumbles on a word, she does not finish it, she waits, then offers two choices. He points, she confirms. Nobody has raised their voice, nobody has treated him as if he understood nothing, and before noon Marc has managed to say, in his own way, that he wanted the shutter open.
- You write it
- The QR is in place
- The reader scans
- Understood, without explaining again
Where to place the QR for this case
Here the QR is not for emergencies. It is for the minute when a carer who does not know Marc comes into his home for the first time. So it has to be where that person is already looking on arrival, without having to search for it.
- Magnetic card on the fridge door, above the logbook: the place every new carer opens on arrival to sign in.
- Card slipped onto the first page of the logbook itself, for the last-minute replacement who arrives without a briefing from the home care service.
- Sticker on the back of the landline phone in the living room, where people call the family or the family doctor when in doubt.
- Link sent by his partner to the area manager of the SAAD (a home care service, in France), so that it travels with the schedule without depending on an object in the home.
The rule is discreet redundancy. The same profile in several places a carer will see, never displayed like a sign on the living room wall. The card informs the person who arrives, it does not turn the home into a hospital room.
Ready-made text templates
The templates below help you fill in the three sections of a profile: the introduction, what helps, what to avoid. You can rewrite them in your own words. The way Marc shows that he has found the word, or that he is giving up on it, is his alone, and that detail is what makes the card truly useful to the carer who is meeting him. You can create a profile whenever you like.
For the "Introduction" section
"I am Marc's wife, he is 58. Since his stroke, he understands everything, but speech no longer comes out as it used to: words get stuck, especially when he is rushed. His intelligence has not changed. It is neither confusion nor a hearing problem."
For the "How to help" section
"You can speak to him normally, adult to adult, in a calm voice. You can give him time, without finishing his sentences. You can ask questions that can be answered with yes or no, or offer two choices when a word gets stuck. You can accept that he points, writes or draws to make himself understood."
For the "What to avoid" section
"Avoid finishing his words for him as soon as he hesitates. Avoid raising your voice, he hears perfectly well. Avoid talking about him in the third person to someone else, in front of him. Avoid concluding that he has not understood because he does not answer right away."
Conditions covered by this case
This case is linked to aphasia: speech gets stuck while comprehension stays whole. The same actions, giving time, not finishing words, offering choices, help whenever an adult is searching for words, including when word-finding becomes harder with age or tiredness, without having to wait for an assessment to get started.
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