Positive Care

A comprehensive and empathic approach to caring for patients and residents

Positive Care enhances seniors’ well-being and brings joy into their lives as part of an excellent standard of care. This is what sets Korian apart in the field of elderly health and care services.

An approach shared by everybody at Korian

That’s right! Everybody at the Korian group - caregivers, doctors, physiotherapists, managers, caterers - is united in their goal to fulfil one mission using the same approach: to enhance the happiness and well-being of our patients and residents in ways that go far beyond providing medical care and meeting their daily needs, as important as those factors may be.
We call this approach Positive Care, and it translates in many ways. At Korian, we are particularly attentive to pain management.

A safely monitored setting

Positive Care is more than just a range of the non-medicinal treatments we have long championed; it is a way of being and doing that is led from the heart, within a perfectly safe care framework. 

Individual care pathways 

It’s about establishing an individual care pathway for each person based on their needs and wishes, whatever health requirements they may have. It is about seamlessly adjusting to each person’s pace and helping them to preserve their abilities in a specially adapted setting where they feel safe and confident.

Korian’s Positive Care approach was developed more than 15 years ago by Didier Armaingaud, the Korian group’s Medical, Ethics and Quality Director, and his teams, inspired by the work of the famous Italian doctor and psychologist, Maria Montessori. 

Interview with Dr Didier Armaingaud - Medical, Ethics and Quality Director for the Korian group.

Positive Care: “putting our hearts in our hands “
“Above all, Positive Care is about empathy. This is what drives us all at Korian to go beyond the quality of care to find ways of enhancing the well-being of our patients and residents and bringing them joy. We not only care for our residents and patients, we also care about them.

Focus on each person’s abilities and desires
We have built our Positive Care approach on strong foundations and a solid structure, and it is the only one of its kind. For more than 15 years, a team of Korian’s dedicated doctors and care workers have observed surgery patients, the ill and the elderly, pursued by a recurrent question: why not focus more on preserving people’s abilities, independence, life choices, and hence, ultimately, their joie de vivre?

Non-medicinal treatments and appropriate therapies
In parallel, another underlying trend was developing in medical circles and in society itself: a progressive shift towards non-medicinal treatments. Of course, medication should be provided when necessary, but only the right amount. And it should be combined with gentler approaches, such as physical therapies – physiotherapy, occupational therapy or rehabilitation – and cognitive and psychobehavioural therapies, such as psychology, sophrology, relaxation or hypnosis. So that’s how Korian gradually developed individual care pathways for patients and residents that include the treatment protocol, but also go beyond it to take in the bigger picture.”

The origin of Positive Care

The Positive Care approach was inspired by the work of Maria Montessori, the famous Italian doctor and psychologist. Maria Montessori is known the world over for devising the educational method named after her. She was one of the first women to qualify as a doctor in Italy in 1896, at the age of 26, and worked at the psychiatric clinic at Rome University. This led her to set up a school to train teachers in a new and revolutionary learning model which enabled children labelled as “deficient” to sit the same exams as other children. She then went on to expand her method to encompass all children. Today, there are more than 20,000 Montessori schools on all continents. The key concept behind the Montessori method is the idea that education is not about imparting knowledge, but rather assisting the child’s natural development in an environment designed for the characteristics and needs of their age. It is an open method based on observation and considering the child as a person worthy of interest. It caters to the child’s needs, which Maria Montessori explained as: “Help me to do it myself”.

Positive Care in our countries

Korian: a European group that draws on diversity to enhance Positive Care.