Frost Manor combines education and fun to raise awareness of LTC safety

‘It has been nice to do something fun and different and to get everyone involved’

Frost Manor recently hosted a health and safety week that married safety awareness with OMNI Health Care’s core values of knowledge, creativity, and fun and laughter.

During the week of June 26-30, the Lindsay long-term care home’s health and safety committee organized daily sessions to raise awareness of everyday safety issues in long-term care, says committee member Amanda Shearer, who works in Frost Manor’s environmental services department.

Amanda says the committee focused on creating sessions that were fun, in order to maximize staff-member involvement.

Sessions the home hosted included an eyewash station in-service that ran 10 minutes every half an hour on the first day. The fire department came to host a training session on fire-extinguisher usage.

There was also a positioning and transferring in-service to help people better understand body mechanics. There was a focus on transferring residents without causing injury to staff or the resident.

Nutritional care manager Neil MacDonald led an in-service on proper hand-washing techniques to prevent infections. Director of care Doneath Stewart led sessions on preventing bed entrapment. Another session was dedicated to recycling to help people understand what items are recyclable and which are not. The week capped off with a barbecue on the Friday.

To encourage participation, staff members were given a “passport” listing each session. When a staff member attended a session, the passport was stamped to indicate attendance. Staff members with each event stamped placed their passport in a box and their name was entered in a prize draw.

“We have new members on the health and safety team, and we just wanted to bring awareness and have a little bit of fun,” says Amanda, who has worked at Frost Manor for 18 years.

“We want everyone to know that we are a team, we’re on the job and if we all work together we all make it home safe.”

She adds: “It has been nice to do something fun and different and to get everyone involved.”

Amanda says the health and safety committee is going to try to hold the event each year.

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