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Top-notch ingredients come together in Maplewood’s turkey club sandwich

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Cook Jackie Jeffrey takes famous sandwich to a new level in her recipe contest submission

Maplewood nutritional care team member Jackie Jeffrey has added a few twists to the classic clubhouse sandwich to give this lunchtime favourite an even better look and taste.

Since the sandwich has become a favourite with residents of the Brighton, Ont. long-term care home, Jackie chose to enter her recipe in OMNI Health Care’s first annual March Madness recipe contest.

Knowing residents enjoy toasted sandwiches, Jackie decided to come up with her own version of the clubhouse to serve them.

Clubhouse sandwiches are traditionally made with three slices of toasted bread, turkey, bacon, iceberg lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise.

This sandwich is made with carved oven-roasted turkey, crispy bacon, romaine lettuce hearts and sliced tomato between two toasted slices of sourdough panini, which is spread with Jackie’s special mayonnaise-Dijon-mustard aioli.

The sandwich is served with a dill pickle spear.

“Our residents love toasted sandwiches, so (I) chose this alternative version of a turkey club,” Jackie says in her contest submission form.

Chris Weber, OMNI’s operations manager of nutrition and food service, says the March Madness contest, which saw 16 recipes compete in a bracket contest where votes were cast each week between April 14 and May 6, was close.

The winning entry was a Mediterranean omelette that was created by Country Terrace team member Josephine Goddard.

OMNI launched the March Madness recipe challenge in March in recognition of Nutrition Month in Canada.

Chris came up with the idea to encourage nutritional care managers and cooks to showcase their most-loved recipes and to highlight the high-quality meals served in OMNI homes.

Throughout March, nutritional care managers and cooks prepared their favourite meals, plated them and took photos that were sent to head office. The photos were accompanied by the name of each meal and its recipe.

If you have a story you would like to share with The OMNIway, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

If you have feedback on this story, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

Education, reminiscing and fun mark recent programs at OMNI homes

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Education, reminiscing and fun – these are some of the themes the life enrichment departments in OMNI Health Care long-term care homes have focused on recently during their quality programming.

At Garden Terrace in Kanata, Ont., residents acknowledged Earth Day on April 22 and were provided with an educational session, courtesy of life enrichment aide Sarah Vierra, that focused on the issues the global environment is facing today and how scientists are working to find solutions to those issues.

“We looked at videos that talked about how in the past certain species were very prominent, that all the rainforests were still there, but deforestation happened and pushed them out,” explains Garden Terrace life enrichment co-ordinator (LEC) Rachael King.

“As a result, today’s world has changed, and that was interesting for the residents to learn about.”

At Springdale Country Manor near Peterborough, residents got to celebrate the spirit of the Olympics with the Springdale Spring Fling, a two-week series of events that harnessed OMNI’s core value of fun and laughter.

Team members created a series of events for residents that included discus throwing, paper airplane flying, bull’s-eye shooting, a beanbag toss and bowling.

Each event had a first-, second- and third-place winner, explains life enrichment aide Nikki English, who says residents showed a strong spirit of camaraderie during the events.

Medals were also handed out to the top overall resident who achieved the most standings as well as a medal for the resident who participated in the most events.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm and encouragement among the residents,” Nikki says. “They would each cheer each other on after each turn. … The residents really enjoyed the events and the excitement of seeing how well they could do.”

Meanwhile, at Frost Manor in Lindsay, residents got to step back to the 1980s for a day of fun that celebrated big hair, skinny ties and bright pastel colours.

The April 28 event began with 1980s trivia for the residents. This proved to be a great way to spark reminiscing about famous names from the decade and bring out laughter about the trends of the time, says LEC Amy Whitehead.

The life enrichment team also set up a whiteboard in the home’s main lounge where residents and staff members could write down their favourite 1980s memory or trend.

“Some of the answers included: big hair, bright colours, roller skates, Top Gun, and many more,” Amy says.

In the afternoon, residents enjoyed entertainment courtesy of musician Don Van Halteren, whom Amy describes as “a home favourite,” who played the accordion, including a few songs from the 1980s in his set.

“It’s always great to have these spirited days where lots of fun is had,” Amy says.

If you have a story you would like to share with The OMNIway, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

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PHOTO CAPTION: Frost Manor residents and staff are pictured here during the home’s April 28 ’80s theme day.

Country Terrace team member enters favourite family steak recipe in March Madness challenge

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Annabel Bonoan’s Asian steak is a big hit at home; now she’s making it for residents

Nutritional care team member Annabel Bonoan is bringing “a taste of home” to Country Terrace residents with her delicious Asian steak recipe.

Annabel entered this recipe, which is a favourite with her family in her native Philippines, in OMNI Health Care’s March Madness recipe contest. The recipe finished in the final-four qualifying round of the contest, which ended in May.

Her Asian steak is a recipe Annabel is proud of and she’s happy to share.

She starts by marinating steak in a mixture of soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic, onion and peppers for two hours. Once the steak has become infused with even more flavour from the marinade, she adds the beef to a hot frying pan and sears the meat on both sides. Once seared, the steak is removed from the pan to rest.

While the steak is resting, Annabel adds the marinade back to the pan to deglaze. After heating the marinade for several minutes, she puts the beef back in the pan to finish.

Annabel explains why she chose to enter this recipe in the contest.

“I have chosen this recipe because it is one of my favourite dishes that comes from back home; I make it for my family all the time,” she says.

“I think the residents will like it because it is very flavourful, but not strong, and very simple.”

Chris Weber, OMNI’s operations manager of nutrition and food service, says the March Madness contest, which saw 16 recipes compete in a bracket contest where votes were cast each week between April 14 and May 6, was close.

The winning entry was a Mediterranean omelette, created by Josephine Goddard at Country Terrace, which won “by a very thin margin,” Chris says.

OMNI launched the first annual March Madness recipe challenge in March in recognition of Nutrition Month in Canada.

Chris came up with the idea to encourage nutritional care managers and cooks to showcase their most-loved recipes and to highlight the high-quality meals served in OMNI homes.

Throughout March, nutritional care managers and cooks prepared their favourite meals, plated them and took photos that were sent to head office. The photos were accompanied by the name of each meal and its recipe.

If you have a story you would like to share with The OMNIway, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

If you have feedback on this story, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

Best care strategies help Riverview’s BSO team improve resident’s quality of life

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‘The resident still has both good and bad days, but we are having more good days because of the best-care strategies’

Riverview Manor’s Behavioural Supports Ontario (BSO) team has helped enhance a resident’s quality of life and improved their emotional well-being by using best-care strategies and supportive measures.

BSO team member and personal support worker Karlie Phillips says the resident was experiencing agitation before an outbreak at the Peterborough long-term care home that lasted from December to February.

Due to safety protocols in effect, residents were in isolation during the outbreak, and this resident’s agitation became worse, Karlie says.

Karlie says one of the things team members noticed was when the outbreak ended, this resident was not recognizing familiar faces, including those of caregivers.

BSO team members knew they had to do something to improve the resident’s quality of life, Karlie says, so they began by observing the care that was being delivered to discover what was causing agitation.

One of the things the team discovered was the resident did not like having to go through the process of having clothes changed. Team members contacted the resident’s family and asked if they could bring open-back clothing to the home to mitigate issues their loved one was having when being changed.

The family did so, and the resident stopped becoming agitated when having clothing changed.

The resident was also becoming agitated when being administered medications early in the morning. Since the resident prefers to sleep in, Riverview’s physician was asked to perform a medication review to determine if medications could be given later in the day.

The physician approved administering the resident’s medications later in the day. The resident was able to sleep in and have medications administered later in the morning, which resulted in decreased agitation, Karlie says.

“(The resident) also likes to have the medications put into chocolate pudding and in drinks, we found,” Karlie says.

Once the causes of the resident’s agitation were determined, detailed best-care strategies were written up for team members working on all three shifts, and a list of “care champions” was created to identify team members who were most successful at completing care.

The result has been that the resident is most often allowing team members to complete care without becoming agitated, Karlie says.

“The resident still has both good and bad days, but we are having more good days because of the best-care strategies,” she says.

BSO is a provincial initiative to help enhance the quality of life for seniors affected by dementia and other conditions that cause agitation. The funding, which is provided to long-term care homes through Ontario’s 14 Local Health Integration Networks, is largely put towards staff education.

If you have a story you would like to share with The OMNIway, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

If you have feedback on this story, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

New managers share their vision for Riverview Manor’s future

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Continued partnerships with post-secondary institutions, they say, will be a top priority

Two new managers at Riverview Manor say they’re excited about helping to create the future of the Peterborough long-term care home which, they say, will be built upon “the great base” that’s already in place.

Administrator Matt Riel and director of care Tammy Colman-Sadd, who started their positions in January, also say building upon the dynamic partnerships Riverview Manor has long held with post-secondary educational institutions will be a major part of that plan.

Matt and Tammy say the partnerships Riverview Manor has with Trent University and Fleming College are key to building the future of the home.

“We have had RN students, we have had RPN students here, we currently have 13 or 14 PSW students doing their hours here, and we have another group that will start in a few weeks, so I think both Tammy and I believe (Riverview Manor) is a place where we can educate the next group of staff that are going to come and work here and grow into the future,” Matt says.

“We want to be a real community partner in providing that education to students.”

For many years, students enrolled in nursing, personal support worker and other programs at Trent and Fleming have done their placements at Riverview Manor. Many of the home’s staff members are also graduates of Trent and Fleming programs.

Looking ahead, Matt and Tammy say they want Riverview Manor to continue collaborating with educational institutions to build a strong foundation of nursing and caregiving in the community.

“We want to be a teaching home and we want people to build their careers based on the foundations of OMNI,” Tammy says.

The managers also say they’re fortunate to be working in a long-term care home that has always been focused on being a valuable community partner, in addition to being a home providing excellent resident care.

“We have been very fortunate to have inherited a home that has solid groundwork already built, and I think we are very fortunate that we can take the new generation of health care and move it forward and bring that to fruition,” Tammy says.

“We can set the groundwork here in building the practices we want, and it’s going to give us the opportunity to set the bar for long-term care.”

If you have a story you would like to share with The OMNIway, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

If you have feedback on this story, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

Steak salad makes a return to Willows menu – and scores big in March Madness contest

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This fan-favourite recipe, which combines many sweet and savoury flavours, was one of the Top 4 finalists

A steak salad packed with a variety of flavours and textures was so popular with Willows Estate residents when first introduced several months ago, Jeffrey Peters, the Aurora, Ont. long-term care home’s nutritional care manager, decided to put it back on the menu.

But this steak salad’s story isn’t over.

The meal was such a big hit with everyone at the Willows that Jeffrey decided to enter the recipe in OMNI Health Care’s first annual March Madness recipe challenge. It finished among the Top 4 finalists.

Jeffrey describes this dish as “a very beautiful and vibrant salad with an Asian influence, full of colour and texture.”

The salad includes slices of New York strip loin steak served on a bed of organic greens along with a composite of onions, strawberries, cucumber, cranberries, cherry tomatoes, carrots and toasted almonds.

This melange of flavours and textures is topped with a slice of toasted garlic baguette. The salad is served with an Asian-style dressing and a slice of chilled peach as a garnish.

“Everything was hand-cut and carefully put together for a tasteful experience: New York steak marinated to perfection and a fresh summer salad packed with healthy ingredients and vibrant colour,” Jeffrey says.

Chris Weber, OMNI’s operations manager of nutrition and food service, says the March Madness contest, which saw 16 recipes compete in a bracket contest where votes were cast each week between April 14 and May 6, was close.

The winning entry was a Mediterranean omelette, created by Josephine Goddard at Country Terrace, which won “by a very thin margin,” Chris says.

OMNI launched the first annual March Madness recipe challenge in March in recognition of Nutrition Month in Canada.

Chris came up with the idea to encourage nutritional care managers and cooks to showcase their most-loved recipes and to highlight the high-quality meals served in OMNI’s 18 long-term care homes.

Throughout March, nutritional care managers and cooks prepared their favourite meals, plated them and took photos that were sent to head office. The photos were accompanied by the name of each meal and its recipe.

If you have a story you would like to share with The OMNIway, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

If you have feedback on this story, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

PSW visits Country Terrace on his day off to bring residents Easter cheer

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Trevor Blackmore is being praised for his commitment to residents

Country Terrace personal support worker (PSW) Trevor Blackmore is being praised for coming to work on his day off to bring some Easter cheer – and chocolates – to residents.

On Easter Sunday, Trevor turned up at the Komoka, Ont. long-term care home to visit residents and deliver Easter sweets to them, a gesture life enrichment co-ordinator Lora Blackett says demonstrates Trevor’s commitment to residents and the passion he has for his work.

Lora says Trevor told her he dresses up as the Easter bunny for community functions every year, and he approached her with the idea to come to Country Terrace on Easter Sunday in costume with plenty of treats to hand out.

Trevor is a fairly new team member at Country Terrace and he wanted to share his Easter spirit with residents, Lora says.

“He went around and handed out chocolate and cheer to the residents who loved it,” she tells The OMNIway.

“The residents were laughing and hugging the Easter bunny. At one point the Easter bunny lost his tail – it just fell off – and the residents all thought that was hilarious.”

As much as the visit from the Easter bunny made residents’ day, the big story is about a staff member coming to work on his own time to make everyone’s day a little brighter, Lora says.

“I think it’s so amazing that staff here will volunteer their own time to spread cheer to the residents,” she says. “I think that really tells you the kind of person they are.

If you have a story you would like to share with The OMNIway, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

If you have feedback on this story, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

Bunny visit, egg hunt and lots of reminiscing highlight Garden Terrace Easter

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‘We tried to plan as many events as we could’

Garden Terrace residents recently had a ball – an Easter ball, that is, when the Kanata, Ont. long-term care home hosted a social event April 14 that included some traditional Easter activities and lots of reminiscing.

Rachael King, the Garden Terrace life enrichment co-ordinator, says many of the ladies and gents got dressed up for the event, which, she says, “was more like a social.”

Team members, she notes, decorated the home’s activity area and provided name tags for everyone as well as handed out tea and potato chips.

Then there was an appearance from the main attraction of the day, the Easter bunny. Life enrichment aide Dakota Lynch dressed up for the part and did the rounds handing out Easter eggs filled with a variety of chocolates and candy.

Rachael says one of the best parts of the event was seeing the residents share their favourite Easter stories.

“The residents really liked it (because) they got to reminisce about their Easter traditions,” she tells The OMNIway.

For instance, residents who are from Canada shared stories about how they had Easter-egg hunts as children, while residents who grew up outside of Canada shared memories of the traditions of their home countries.

Over the Easter weekend, there was another Easter bunny visit and a program called “thankful hour”, where residents talked about the things they’re thankful for.

And, of course, no Easter celebration would be complete without an Easter egg hunt.

“We tried to plan as many events as we could,” Rachael says.

While pandemic precautions were still in effect at the event, Rachael says there was also a shared feeling of optimism about life returning to normal.

“Everyone was sitting around and relaxing and talking about the good old days and about what’s coming up in life,” she says. “And that was very nice.”

If you have a story you would like to share with The OMNIway, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

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Excitement building around plans for Village Green redevelopment

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‘If I had to rate the excitement on a scale from one to 10, it would be 15,’ says administrator

Village Green is buzzing with excitement as residents and staff members await the start of construction to build a new 128-bed long-term care home to replace the existing 66-bed residence in Greater Napanee.

“If I had to rate the excitement on a scale from one to 10, it would be 15,” administrator Linda Pierce tells The OMNIway.

The design plans for the new Village Green were recently unveiled, and a site at the northwest corner of Drive-In Road and Highway 41 in Greater Napanee has been secured for the new home.

Construction could begin as early as autumn.

“As we start now to move along the path and really have a heightened awareness that this is actually going to happen, that we are closer to putting shovels in the ground, there’s a real flavour of excitement,” Linda says.

Once completed, the redeveloped Village Green will be a Class A long-term care home that will include four spacious neighbourhoods, with 32 residents living in each neighbourhood.

To enhance privacy, all rooms will have either one or two beds, and there will be a host of modern amenities, such as wider hallways and more home-like dining areas. Outside, the new Village Green will have scenic gardens and outdoor space as well as a “whole home” gathering area and chapel space.

“We are going from a 66-bed home to a 128-bed home, and the exciting thing for the residents is that they will no longer have to share a basic room with (as many as) three other residents,” Linda says.

“There’s going to be such an enhancement (in quality of life).”

The new Village Green, which has been designed by Toronto-based G Architects, has been planned “very, very well” with a strong focus on privacy, Linda adds.

Linda notes that residents have had input into the home’s design and that G Architects has included their input in the plans. Some of the features that have been important to residents include enhanced privacy, wider doors and more spacious bathrooms, Linda says.

Village Green opened in 1978 and the home has always been focused on providing a high quality of life for residents, Linda says, but a new home is needed to stay ahead of the curve and meet the needs of an ever-changing resident population.

“The residents love living here, but, let’s face it, it’s an almost 45-year-old home that was built all that time ago and the population has changed,” she says, adding everyone at the home is pleased with the province for approving the new build.

“We are thrilled.”

If you have a story you would like to share with The OMNIway, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

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PHOTO CAPTION: Pictured above, an illustration created by G Architects of the front entrance of the new, 128-bed Village Green that has been approved for redevelopment.

‘Why not beat the winter blues away with Tropical Day’

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Frost Manor sends residents to a warm beach during a fun and engaging daylong program

Even with the official coming of spring two days earlier, the cold winter weather was still hanging around in March, so the Frost Manor life enrichment team worked together to bring a sunny beach atmosphere to residents.

On March 23, the Lindsay, Ont. long-term care home hosted Tropical Day to make residents feel as if they were on a Caribbean holiday.

Everyone was encouraged to dress in their favourite warm-weather gear, and a large number of residents wore clothing such as tropical shirts and leis to help them get into the spirit of the day, says Amy Whitehead, Frost Manor’s life enrichment co-ordinator.

Team members decorated the home with colourful props that included palm trees and pineapples.

During the afternoon, a drink cart stocked with two types of tropical mocktails – strawberry daiquiris and piña coladas – that were served with paper umbrellas made the rounds to offer residents a refreshing taste of the Caribbean.

There was also a variety of tropical fruit provided as a treat that was both tasty and nutritious.

In the evening, life enrichment aide Taylor Davies hosted a hula chair-dance program for residents.

Although the mercury was still showing sub-zero temperatures and the skies were grey, inside Frost Manor the decorations, refreshments and activities helped make everything feel warm and relaxing, Amy says.

“It was a really great day,” she says. “As we say, ‘why not beat the winter blues away with Tropical Day.’ ”

If you have a story you would like to share with The OMNIway, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.

If you have feedback on this story, please contact the newsroom at deron(at)axiomnews.com.