A pilot program at Youville Home might change the way healthcare is delivered among Covenant Health long-term facilities in Alberta.
The program means families and volunteers can now be trained to deliver certain health tasks to patients, alleviating the burden felt among front-line workers at the facilities.
Cecilia Marion, senior director at YouVille Home and project lead, said oftentimes nurses are busy rushing from one task to another, causing frustration among family members.
In the case of using a chair lift, for example, the facility requires two staff members present for it to be used. If one staff member is on break or attending to someone else, the patient has to wait.
“If we don't have to wait and (the family member) is trained, then the resident gets better care, and the family member and everyone is less frustrated,” Marion said.
Before someone is admitted into a long-term care facility, they’ve often had either a family member or close relative look after them. Once they get into a facility, those tasks – such as eating, brushing teeth or hair, operating chair lifts – are passed onto staff.
Current protocol doesn’t allow anyone who’s not staff to perform the tasks.
With the new program, people who want to help can get the training they need. In partnership with NAIT’s Digital Media and IT program and staff, Youville has developed eight training videos for various tasks.
They’re divided into high-risk duties, such as eating and using a lift, and low-risk ones, like brushing someone’s hair.
Youville’s family council, a group comprised of family members of patients, also weighed in on the development of the videos.
Linda Podlosky, chair of the committee and whose mother has been at the facility for 11 years, helped create the acting scripts behind the videos. Part of her role was identifying jargon not understood by the layperson, and switch it to easily understood language.
Sitting at a table in Youville Home, Podlosky said it’s often frustrating when staff are so busy they’re unable to meet all the needs of patients in a timely matter.
Having watched nurses in action, she sometimes would step in instead of waiting.
“(Dad) was sitting in his chair, and then just kind of slithered down to the floor. And so it's like, ring the bell, you wait, you wait,” she said of her father, who also was a patient at Youville Home.
“If my sister and I are both visiting, she grabs one arm, I grab the other, and we kind of ... (help) just get (him) back up in his chair.”
Although she’s not one of the six families currently participating in the pilot project, she thinks it’s going to be a game-changer.
Anna Dimitrov, licensed practical nurse at Youville, agrees.
On a good day, there’s enough staff and the shift fluidly moves along. But since the medical needs of patients change on a daily – and sometimes hourly – basis, sometimes it’s difficult to keep up.
“I think every human being deserves certain standards,” Dimitrov said. “They brought this country, they built this country and they deserve better care in my opinion.”
Sometime in June or July, the project will be evaluated and tweaked. If all goes well, it will be introduced as a full-fledged program at the facility. In the future, it will most likely be unrolled at facilities across Alberta, Marion said.
Participants don’t have to watch all eight videos, but instead can get training for the specific task they want to perform.
For more information about Youville Home, visit: https://www.covenanthealth.ca/hospitals-care-centres/youville-home/.
