Network meeting looks at different components of palliative care
Long-term care homes share problems and solutions
Tuesday March 25, 2008 -- Deron Hamel
PETERBOROUGH, Ont. — The latest Four Counties Long-Term Care Palliative Network workshop focused on several areas of palliative care and included eight 30-minute seminars jam-packed with information for attendees to take back to their long-term care home.

The workshop, entitled “A Passport to Clinical Skills for Palliative Care,” included information covering aspects of palliative care such as wound care, holistic approaches and pain assessments.

The goal of the workshop was to increase practical palliative care knowledge. The event was held March 20 at the Rock Haven Motor Hotel in Peterborough and was sponsored by health-care supplier Smith & Nephew.

Attendees were engaged in discussions about these subjects from professionals in the sector. Each attendee was given a “passport” that was signed by each of the eight instructors upon completion of each session.

Among the 100 attendees were representatives from four OMNI long-term care homes in the Peterborough area — Springdale Country Manor, Pleasant Meadow Manor, Riverview Manor and Burnbrae Gardens.

Barb Bremner, a pharmacist consultant for supplier Medical Pharmacies and a member of the network’s steering committee, said these workshops are important to people working in long-term care because they provide a forum to discuss topics close to them.

“They see a real value for them because it helps them deal with one the biggest things they face every day,” she said.

Bremner adds that the network’s workshops foster integration and allow different homes to share best practices in palliative care.

“They don’t feel alone anymore,” she says. “It used to be that you taught them palliative care and then they were on their own. Now they can come together, they can talk to other people and they can share their problems and solutions and take back whatever they learn and apply it.”

Riverview Manor administrator Mary Anne Greco says the success of the network’s workshops is reflective of the successes shared within the long-term care sector as it moves forward into the new age of health care.

“The whole decentralization process is (working),” she says. “We’re seeing it, we’re living it, it’s manifesting and for long-term care to be on that cutting edge is essential to our development.”

The Four Counties Palliative Care Network holds five workshops annually to discuss best practices in palliative care in long-term care homes. The network consists of representatives from long-term care homes in Peterborough, Haliburton, Northumberland and Kawartha Lakes counties.

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