Streamway Villa begins quality improvement huddles on each shift
Streamway Villa staff members are seen here gathering for a quality improvement huddle on Jan. 28.
Short meetings aimed at enhancing resident care, increasing staff engagement
The Streamway Villa team is dedicating five to seven minutes per shift on hosting huddles focused on areas of quality improvement and building staff morale and engagement.
The huddles, which are attended by every staff member from each department, began in early January. The huddles focus on one area of quality improvement each week, such as falls prevention, restraint reduction, eliminating antipsychotic usage and other quality indicators.
Discussions in the huddles are based around worksheets administrator Kylie Szczebonski has compiled from online sources.
The goal of the huddles is to improve quality care for residents while engaging all staff members in the importance of quality in a long-term care setting and valuing everyone’s input in the process.
The huddles also help Streamway Villa achieve the motto the Cobourg long-term care home has adopted for this year: “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success,” a quote from American industrialist Henry Ford.
“We say it every week so that we can get people to start putting it in their heads that we’re working as a team,” Szczebonski tells The OMNIway.
The huddles also aim to underscore the value of being resident-focused. In other words, no matter what a staff member may have to do in a day in terms of paperwork, for example, caring for residents must always come first.
“We want people to realize that, yes, we have tasks to do, but we’re taking care of people, so people come first before the task,” Szczebonski says.
While the huddles have only been used for three weeks, they are already garnering positive results, Szczebonski says, adding the greatest outcome has been the discussions staff members are having.
“The other day we heard a housekeeper talking to another staff member about how they liked what we were doing in the huddles,” she says. “I’ve heard a couple of PSWs (personal support workers) say, ‘This is really awesome because now we’re getting some of the communication going.’”
Additionally, the huddles are engaging staff members who are sometimes not as connected with others on the front-line team, such as those working in the kitchen.
“I feel, as the administrator, that the huddles are bringing people together and it’s bringing a more positive approach to 2016, so I want to keep that trend going,” Szczebonski says.
“Quality improvement is something everyone has to pay attention to.”
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