Images by Emely Perez
By Emely Perez
What used to be the convention center and a nursing home is now the Majestic Care Center . The center in Camden, NJ has gone through many names but its purpose is still the same: To help put those who suffer from an illness on the road to recovery. Poverty and health problems are some of the struggles Camden residents face every day. However, these residents have the opportunity of having health care centers such as Majestic Care Center in Camden that provides them with the resources to make their lives better.
Majestic Care Center is a sub- acute/long term care and rehabilitation facility located right across the street from Cooper Medical Hospital in Camden for people who seek to recover from an illness, accident, injury or surgery.
People who come seeking these services come from all over the place including Philadelphia. Chyna Clayton is director of Activities for Majestic Care Center.
“We get (patients) from all over the place. We get them from Cooper, Our Lady of Lourdes and Philadelphia,” Clayton said. “We have a lot of different challenges here.”
Majestic Care Center provides round-the-clock short and long term care for residents who require services that assisted living facilities can’t provide. Majestic Care Center is a 120 beds facility provides people with different needs such as dementia, depression and gunshots victims a place where they can get that piece of mind they need through their integrative approach which focuses on the wellness of the patients.
This approach treats and nurtures the patients’ minds, body and spirit in order for them to recover and leave the facility feeling and knowing they have better days ahead. Clayton has been working at Majestic Care Center for twenty-eight years now and says that she does not know if she will retire here. At Majestic Care Center Camden residents or other surrounding cities residents receive many different services such as seven-day a week therapy services as well as recreational programs, for example scheduled outings, live entertainments, beauty services, restaurant-style dining and spiritual care. These programs are part of their efforts to restore their patients’ independence and renew their spirits.
At Majestic Care Center people who seek short term rehabilitation, for example after a hospital stay due to a surgery such as a knee replacement or a stroke or other cardiac event these people might need rehabilitation and here they would be assisted with physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, post-surgical care and other services that are designed to help them transition back to what was their home before staying at a hospital.
Since these are short term rehabilitation, patients only stay at Majestic Care Center for about a month or so.
“A lot times these people won’t be here for a long time because it is short term on the third floor so they would be here probably like two weeks,” said Clayton.
Each program is designed to meet the patient’s unique needs and helping them reach their highest level of independence. As for people who need long term care, Majestic Care Center also offers these kinds of services. These services are more for people who have nowhere to go. In that case, here they are assisted by trained and licensed nurses in a homelike setting.
“Long term care they live here forever. Let’s say they are here past a month or two they are eligible to become long term care but they would be moved to the second floor and that’s where they would be for the rest of their lives,” said Clayton.
Clayton said that admissions to the Majestic Care Center can vary depending on the week, at times can have more than ten and in other cases they can just have two admissions.
At the end of the year the center staff has an annual review where the patients and their families discuss how they are doing. For instance, a patient might be in the last stage of dementia which means the patient is dying. They also discuss whether the family wants to put their loved one in “hospice” or comfort care.
“It’s a hard job because you are dealing with people pretty much but we just try to keep them busy”, Clayton said.
News from Camden 