OMNI staff gets lesson on importance of spiritual love
Monday January 28, 2008 -- Deron Hamel
Representatives from six OMNI homes met with other long-term care providers in the Four Counties Palliative Care Network for a one-day seminar, entitled “Spirituality in Long-Term Care.”

The event — which was attended by staff members from Springdale Country Manor, Frost Manor, Maplewood, Pleasant Meadow Manor, Riverview Manor and Burnbrae Gardens — was held Jan. 24 at St. John’s Anglican Church in Peterborough.

Rev. Stan Chu Ilo, a Roman Catholic priest, scholar and author, was keynote speaker in the afternoon session. Ilo said his message to the network was that the “spirituality that man should embrace is the spirituality of love.”

This spirituality, he stressed, is not centred on religion or creed, but is rather an ethic that everyone can embrace. Workers in long-term care, he added, reflect this type of love-centred spirituality because they chose their profession to help others, not because they feel they need to be rewarded.

“Those in long-term care are really challenged every day to manifest this kind of spirituality by simple acts of love that treats the other person as a subject of love, not as an object of someone’s passion or desire,” Ilo said.

But sometimes, Ilo noted, those working in long-term care homes become so fixated on helping others they ignore their own needs. This, he said, can be a recipe for emotional disaster.

“How can you find the peace within you when you’re always trying to care for others?” he said. “You cannot give love unless you’re already the centre of love.”

Barb Bremner, a pharmacist consultant for Medical Pharmacies and member of the Four Counties steering committee, says she enjoyed the seminar, which was sponsored by OMNI Health Care and health-care company Nova Nordisk.

In particular, Bremner said she enjoyed Ilo’s discussion on the importance of ignoring negative criticisms from residents and his assertion that if a resident in a long-term care home is happy and cheerful, it’s because they were always this way. Likewise, if an individual is negative, it’s because they’ve been that way their entire life.

“Some people are so geared to pleasing (residents) that they take their actions personally, and we see that a lot in long-term care,” she said. “Because they’re trying so hard to do a good job and make that person feel comfortable in their own home, that they forget that we have disagreements in our homes. . . . We sometimes try to make it a perfect environment and it’s never going to be that.”