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EDITORIAL
On love and diversity
in long-term care
When you tape your fingers together, obsure your sight
with eye patches or goggles, bungee cord your knees together
and are spoken to in gibberish, you get a sense for what
it is like have some form of dementia.
When you take time paying attention to the causes of pain,
physical or emotional, and track a person’s difficult
times you learn how to see the unseen reasons for their
pain and agitation. You’ve spent a lot of time learning
about the person, you’ve made a personal commitment
to them. You are involved.
When you learn that one of the residents you support was
a business man and begin addressing him with a degree
of formality fitting to his life experience, as Charlene
Renkema of Rosebridge Manor did, you’ve paid attention
to the whole person. When that resident no longer refuses
care you know you’ve made the difference.
When you create entire rooms full of memorabilia designed
to bring back memories and stir up familiar and comforting
emotions, you’ve demonstrated again that you care.
It was the staff at Willows that came to love and care
for Bob Beatie deeply enough that they did what nobody
else was there to do when Bob died earlier this month.
Bob had no other family than the one he acquired during
his time at Willows. It was Willows that ensured he was
respected, and loved even in death.
Then there is the man who had been living in an institution
for decades. With the support of community agenices the
man, who has an intellectual disability, was integrated
into long term care at OMNI’s Forest Hill in Kanata.
In the same way OMNI homes work hard at understanding
residents as whole people and then supporting them in
the ways that suit the resident best, Forest Hill made
adjustments to accommodate the man’s very unique
personal history.
It’s been said that the first duty of love is to
listen. And there is no shortage of listening going on
in OMNI homes.
OMNI’s approach to care, Supportive Measures is
about listening in the most intense ways. Whether it is
stepping into the shoes of a resident with dementia, delving
into someone’s personal history and preferences,
working across sectors to get the right thing done, or
seeing to the final farewell to a resident without family,
the love runs deep.
It’s because it runs so deep that people with such
a diversity of support needs can find the care they need
in OMNI homes. When the starting point is to listen and
pay attention to each person as whole and unique something
bigger is at work.
Love the person first, listen carefully, pay attention,
then provide the appropriate Supportive Measures. Both
the motivation and the method come together to create
what might be universally suitable way to provide care
in all kinds of situations.
We love you, and we support you. It’d be hard to
go too far wrong from there.
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STORIES
Supportive
measures ‘accommodate’ residents’
previous lifestyles
November 24, 2006
One Springdale Country Manor resident prefers a shower
in the morning instead of an evening bath. Full
Story
Home uses dining room
as supportive measures teaching tool
November 23, 2006
Almonte Country Haven employees will be receiving hands-on
training in supportive measures with the creation of
a dining room specifically for residents who have frontal
lobe dementia. Full
Story
‘Anybody who
has had a previous lifestyle is a candidate for supportive
measures’
November 14, 2006
While people are living longer and entering long-term
care older and with more complex needs, there’s
also a younger population moving in to Ontario’s
nursing homes. Full
Story
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