OMNI core value of creativity helping to drive quality at homes

OMNI Health Care’s 18 long-term care homes are focused on quality, and it’s OMNI’s core value of creativity that often generates quality outcomes.

The OMNIway has recently covered stories demonstrating how staff members use the core value of creativity to enhance quality in OMNI homes.

Food is one of the hallmarks of quality in OMNI long-term care homes. At Almonte Country Haven, the nutritional care team focuses on fresh-baked, made-from-scratch foods that are a hit with the Lanark County long-term care home’s residents.

Every day, Almonte’s kitchen is filled with the aroma of fresh-baked cookies, muffins, breads, buns, pies and cakes. Nutritional care manager Dave Benn wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s all done in-house, with no mixes,” he says.

Dave says he and his team make time to do the extra work by carefully planning the schedule to find the hours. Since he has kitchen hours for himself, Dave can dedicate time to making homemade baked goods as well, he adds.

Providing people with creative programming is another ingredient to a quality long-term care experience.

An art program at Village Green is encouraging residents to maximize their artistic skills and celebrate their creative achievements.

The Art with Martha program, which is led by volunteer Martha de Bruyn, has encouraged several residents to start painting with watercolours. Other residents have rekindled their interest in painting since starting the program.

Favourite subjects to paint include summer scenes and flowers, says life enrichment co-ordinator (LEC) Karen Coulter.

Soon, residents’ completed artwork will be displayed at the home, she adds.

“The residents are really engaged with the painting, and we’re going to be putting their paintings up on the walls,” Karen says, adding that this is something residents are looking forward to seeing.

“The residents, when they’re painting, really have a sense of pride in what they have done.”

Residents have also painted eight of the patio stones in the home’s courtyard as part of the program, Karen notes.

Frost Manor team members demonstrated their creativity during the week of June 26-30, when 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.

Committee member Amanda Shearer, who works in Frost Manor’s environmental services department, 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.

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.”

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