New staff members help drive supportive measures
Tuesday March 11, 2008 -- Deron Hamel
Not only did last year’s supportive measures training at Rosebridge Manor successful increasing awareness about how to tend to the needs of residents with dementia, new staff members have also been receptive to the idea, says Kathy Barr.

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

In 2007, OMNI’s 16 long-term care homes embarked on a year-long endeavour to educate each of the approximately 1,500 staff members in supportive measures. In previous years, only frontline staff received supportive measures training.

As new individuals join the staff at the Jasper long-term care home they receive supportive measures training. Barr, the home’s life enrichment co-ordinator and a supportive measures trainer, says new staff has taken well to supportive measures training.

“I’ve heard a lot of really good supportive measures coming out of our new staff, and I’m hoping that some of that has come from our education,” says Barr. “I’m seeing appropriate interventions by our new staff with our residents who have dementia, which indicates to me that something’s working.”

While these practices have long been used in the home, Barr says she has seen a heightened awareness of supportive measures since the training was completed in December.

When it came to training staff members, Barr said many were intrigued by the first component of the program, which dealt with the brain and explained why people with dementia may exhibit certain agitations.

Once staff members understand the underlying medical reasons causing agitation in residents, the better equipped they are to know what to do when behaviours occur.

“That was an area that we didn’t focus on heavily before in supportive measures,” Barr says. “We had lots of interventions in the past, talking about how to treat our residents with dignity and support them that way, but the medical aspect was (an important) thing for people to understand.”

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