West Lake team ventures outside their comfort zone

Many of them had never done it before but now that they have, the team members behind West Lake Terrace’s contribution to the OMNI Video Challenge are feeling upbeat.

They give a resounding “Yeah!” with the completion of the video filming on April 20.

“I’m glad it’s finished. We just can’t wait to see the end product now,” says RAI co-ordinator Karen Keeler who led the creative team.

Generating a video “scared us at first because none of us had done anything like that,” director of care Cathi Kerr says. But with collaboration as their anchor, team members combined ideas, knowledge and skillsets to come up with a video that educates and entertains.

“Karen really took the ball and ran with it and the rest of us added our two cents’ worth,” Kerr says. “And that has been fun, realizing that we could do something like that, pushed beyond our boundaries of what we thought we could do.”

Focused on lifts and transfers, the video features front-line and management team members as well as residents. There is instruction are musical and comedic elements.

All entries in the OMNI Video Challenge, to be unveiled at OMNI’s managers’ forum later this month, will become available to the 18 long-term care homes as teaching tools. West Lake Terrace’s team sees the greatest benefit from their project will be the educational value.

“The proper way (for staff members) to do their lifts and transfers — that will be the best thing that they could take away,” Keeler says.

“And enjoy learning it while they’re learning it,” Kerr says.

Life enrichment co-ordinator Janie Butler also hopes for something else. “I hope our sense of fun comes across in that video cause that’s us. That’s West Lake Terrace — we have fun while we’re getting our job done.”

The video also aims to underscore the importance of caring for residents with respect and the importance of team members’ and residents’ safety.

Click here to watch a video interview of the team.

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