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The Importance of Surveys

For those not already aware it is survey season at Bethany! Throughout the summer, Bethany survey teams and our Health Quality Council of Alberta (HQCA) are asking long-term care and supportive living residents, their families, and housing tenants about their experiences at Bethany. This year the HQCA is surveying family members at most of our sites as part of the provincial survey that happens every 3 years. This year is special, though, because two of our sites are working directly with the HQCA survey team in piloting an electronic version of the survey that may influence how our province surveys families into the future. Very exciting!

Our family and housing surveys are typically mailed out. However, resident surveys are completed by specially trained, registered Bethany volunteers through one on one interviews. These interviews can take anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes. In 2013, 171 residents were surveyed, in 2015, 197 residents were surveyed and we are hoping to get more than 200 surveys completed this year. This represents well over 100 hours our volunteers are committing, which is equivalent to working full time for just over 2 ½ weeks.

Coordinating volunteer and site schedules require the support of many but the volunteer coordinators at each site really contribute to the overall success of surveys at their sites. This year’s surveys are going very smoothly in large part due to their efforts. I would like to extend a special thank you to the volunteer coordinators for all of their support and assistance with our survey process.

Improving quality of care through a resident and family care approach requires support and opportunities for active engagement of residents and families in decisions that affect their lives. Surveys are one way Bethany engages residents and families in a conversation about how we are doing and how to improve the quality of care and services across our sites. Families and residents welcome the chance to share their views about their care and relationships at Bethany and can be our strongest advocates in shaping the environment where care is delivered and the quality of care received. We each have a role to play in ensuring that they are strong advocates.

Survey results will be shared over the coming months with Bethany Leadership, the site Quality Safety Committees and Family Councils. I encourage each of you to take time to review the results and to consider how you can support the suggestions, ideas and recommendations that come forward through this process.

As always, I welcome any ideas or suggestions you may have. Please send them to me at nancy.hughes@bethanyseniors.com.

Regards,

– Nancy

People of Bethany

I celebrated my first year anniversary at Bethany in June, and I have reflected on my personal highlights over the past year. What definitely stands out for me are the people – the “People of Bethany”. I have been inspired by seeing Bethany employees proudly wearing their “People of Bethany” t-shirts as I visit our sites. Did you know that People of Bethany is our digital media initiative launched in September 2016 to connect us all through showcasing the lives of our residents, volunteers, staff and community partners on Instagram and Facebook?

Our People of Bethany campaign is creating strong conversations and connecting us all. That is the power of social media. I’m sure many of you with young children can relate to my concerns about the digital generation and their obsession with technology. I struggle watching my 12 year old daughter Aimee and her friends sitting in my living room all staring at their phones and communicating to each other digitally. However, I have come to recognize and appreciate that social media connects us in very powerful (and different!) ways that can inspire us and bring us closer as a community. I believe our People of Bethany social media campaign has done just that.

I have enjoyed reading the amazing stories of our People of Bethany, and feel like I have personally connected with so many people within the Bethany community. I love going online regularly to see the new photos and read the new stories of our People of Bethany, and was proud to share my story with friends and colleagues through Facebook. Sharing on Facebook created a dialogue about my life and experience in not for profit health care that hadn’t existed otherwise.

Our People of Bethany stories are continuing throughout the next year. I encourage you to tell your story, get engaged and connect with us on social media and proudly support the People of Bethany!

– Lisa

School is out! – and it appears that, this year, we are headed into the summer in a spectacular way, at least in comparison to other summers in the last few years.

I know everyone has their own favourite season, and for me that is summer. It always feels liberating to know that you can walk outside without finding a coat and putting on boots to keep out the cold or wet. It is a time to easily keep active, by getting out for a walk or a run or a bike ride to explore the areas around our homes, or by hiking, golfing or boating in places farther afield. It is a time to socialize with our neighbours, as we work in our yards or relax outside, rather than moving quickly to get to the shelter of our homes or cars or work places. It is also the time of year that many of us travel to places near or far, either to visit relatives or friends, or to explore places we have never been before. These are just some of the many ways we can exercise our own discretion to choose how we want to spend our time. It is indeed an exciting time when we can do different things to satisfy what we want to do for our own enjoyment!

Last week, Bethany also introduced our Service Excellence Program – WAVE. I had the pleasure of introducing the program to most of the staff in my portfolio (it is a small group of dedicated staff who perform a number of very different and distinct roles). I was excited about how they identified, in their own unique ways, how they might choose to practice the Bethany Standards for Service Excellence in their day to day work. These standards provide 24 statements, summarized within 11 themes, which we can all identify with as we carry out our daily routines and activities at work, whatever those may be. The standards should not be new to any of us: they just remind us all of the things we should choose to pay attention to as we go about our work.

I encourage all of us to read the Bethany Standards for Service Excellence and apply them, using our own discretion and applying our own good judgment, to determine how we approach our work at Bethany. This is just one of the important ways we, the People of Bethany, contribute directly or indirectly to our residents and families in Creating Caring Communities.

As always, I welcome ideas, suggestions and any questions that you may have. Please feel free to send them to me at alasdair.smith@bethanyseniors.com.

Take care,

– Alasdair

Looking back and also to the future

Canada Day celebrations marking 150 years of confederation this past weekend were cause for much celebration for many. It was an opportunity to look back at where we have been and ahead to where we wish to go. We were reminded that the history of our land and first peoples here is much older. We looked forward to an increasingly diverse and inclusive Canada that we might become by the time of 200 year celebrations in 50 years. At Bethany too, it is important to look back as we continue to look forward. Our mission to create caring communities grows out of a vision of people who were motivated to care for the vulnerable among them. They created a home where people could age well. A community of caring was supported by both staff and countless volunteers.

While the way in which care is delivered these seven decades later is more regulated and interconnected with our health care system, the reasons we care remain the same. People should have the opportunity to age well in a community that honours their dignity and values. Like the country we call home, our future will also be one of growing diversity and inclusion. We can look back, but we are also looking forward to better ways of providing for the needs of our residents, tenants, families, staff and volunteers. Thank you for the part you play in Creating Caring Communities at Bethany!

And I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you appreciate from our past and what you hope for our future. Email me at daranne.harris@bethanyseniors.com.

Blessings,

– Daranne

“Being Green- Environmentally Friendly Best Practices”

I recently had the privilege of attending the National Health Leadership Conference in Vancouver, B.C. It was a great opportunity to connect with health leaders and hear about exciting initiatives underway in health care across the country. I attended a particularly interesting session on “green” health care that was very informative and thought provoking. The speaker was from the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care and talked about the work the Coalition does in helping health care facilities (and organizations) with the implementation of green health care best practices and to become better equipped to deal with the growing demands placed on health facilities to be environmentally responsible. The Coalition has been in place since 2000 and has had a significant impact on the greening of the Canadian health care landscape.

There are a number of areas that organizations need to focus on in terms of “green practices”:

1. Sustainable Facilities – health care facilities are intensive users of energy and water which contributes to a large overall carbon footprint. It is important to think about strategies for reducing our carbon footprint and these conversations are occurring as we embark on construction of our new buildings.
2. Water Conservation – health care facilities are large users of water. When we do not use water efficiently or productively, this drives up costs. As well, the cumulative demand for water results in competition for locally available water supplies and can threaten aquatic ecosystems.
3. Environmentally Preferable Purchasing – What products we purchase and how we purchase them can impact the environment. When we adopt environmentally preferable purchasing we purchase goods and services whose environmental impacts have been analyzed and determined to be less harmful to the environment. We currently undertake a number of product trials and this is one aspect that we look at.

These are just a few of the areas that require focus – there are others such as waste management and healthy and sustainable foods; these too, are areas where we need to think about “green” practices.

Perhaps the most important message of the presentation was that both leaders and staff within an organization need to be committed to this concept. This commitment is essential if we are to achieve environmental improvement and sustainability within the health sector. At Bethany we are already doing a number of things to support the environment but we need to support each other to do more. I would encourage you to bring forward any ideas or thoughts you have about this; it is so important on our journey to implement and integrate environmentally responsible practices into the delivery of care.

Regards,

– Nancy