Rosebridge celebrates completion of supportive measures training
Thursday March 6, 2008 -- Deron Hamel
With each of its staff members fully trained in supportive measures, the management team at Rosebridge Manor hosted a dinner party Feb. 28 to celebrate everyone’s achievement.

Kathy Barr, the Jasper long-term care home’s life enrichment co-ordinator, says events like this are important because they get everyone at the home into the same room.

“I really think it brings people together on the same page and puts it right in front of their face just how much of what they actually do impacts the residents in a great, great way, and how much we really are a family,” she says.

Nutritional care manager Kori Bigelow cooked up a meal of lasagna, stuffed chicken and caesar salad for the 30 staff members who attended the dinner. As part of the event, a picture-slide show of the supportive measures training was shown to the audience, which brought back memories, notes Barr.

“When we’re watching those pictures roll by, everyone remembers those experiences,” she says. “I think it’s a good way to bring the team together to celebrate the accomplishments — you’re not focusing on the challenges, you’re focusing on the good that you do.”

In 2007, OMNI tasked each of its approximately 1,500 staff members in its 16 long-term care homes to complete supportive measures training by the end of the year.

In the past, supportive measures training had only been mandatory for frontline staff. But because supportive measures is a core value for OMNI Health Care, the long-term care provider wanted everyone trained.

Supportive measures refer to the methods used to support behaviours exhibited by residents with dementia, rather than trying to change them. When staff adapts to the behaviour it makes the resident happy and often gets to the root of the problem.

Barr says the evening went well and that there was a spirit of accomplishment and fulfillment in the room.

“It was just a beautiful evening,” says Barr. “There were a lot of thanks all around and individual discussions about some of the staff experiences that have improved the quality of our residents’ lives in all the departments.”

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