Sun Parlor Home Staff Leading Discussion on Resident Involvement

An initiative at Sun Parlor Home to keep residents front and centre at meetings about their care is being highlighted at a national conference in May.

Two staff members at the 206-bed Leamington long-term care home, which is owned and operated by the County of Essex, will lead a discussion about resident care reviews at Walk With Me 2024. More than 500 older adults, care partners, educators, policymakers, students and researchers are expected to attend the May 2-3 conference in Ottawa to talk about changing the culture of aging in Canada.

Social worker Dillon Underwood and manager of life enrichment Cynthia Reed will lead a session called Connect and Reflect: Resident Care Conferences. They will speak about the changes Sun Parlor Home has made to resident care reviews in the past year. The transition centres around a motto that appears on notebooks the two plan to give to participants of their session at Walk With Me: "Nothing about residents without residents."

The initiative began when Sun Parlor Home Administrator Jayne Brooks Keller tasked Underwood with revamping the way regular care reviews of individual residents were done.

It was October 2022. Staff and residents were still recovering from the isolation, long hours and strict protocols required during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Underwood, who was hired in 2020 and hadn't previously worked in long-term care, threw himself into his mission. He started by talking to staff members, researching the available literature and reaching out to other long-term care homes to find out how they did resident care reviews.

Then Reed helped set up a meeting with residents to find out what they wanted from the conferences, which were often held by staff without the resident present. The prime focus tended to be the medical aspects of care, even though all parts of the resident's life at the home - including diet, personal care, recreation and social activities -complete the picture.

Underwood and Reed asked residents how they felt about being more involved in the care reviews. The residents were enthusiastic. Even if they would not be able to understand or recall everything discussed, they felt good about having some control by being present with whoever they chose to be with them, Reed said. The residents also voted to give the care reviews a new name.

That is how Sun Parlor Home's Interdisciplinary Team Conferences (IDTCs for short) became Wellness Reviews centred around the residents.

With residents on board, Underwood's next mission was to convince staff to embrace the new approach as he began scheduling care reviews in February 2023. That proved to be challenging because the times and locations residents choose for the meetings don't always mesh with the schedules of staff members responsible for their care. Ensuring staff from all areas - from nursing to recreation - are present is also a balancing act.

Reed credits Underwood with changing minds through one-on-one conversations with staff members about the value of their input. He also personally invites residents to the meetings.

"I think the biggest piece is the resident is at the centre of the care conference," Underwood said. He starts each meeting by asking the resident what they would like to say.

"When we have a good care conference, everyone is laughing and talking and leaves feeling we really did something," he said. "We can't control if, how and when we're going to be in a place like this. For all of us there could come a time when we're at the receiving end of this care. That's why it's always important to bring it down to the personal level."

Brooks Keller said it is an honour to have Underwood invited to speak about Sun Parlor Home's initiative at Walk With Me.

"The Sun Parlor Home team is especially proud of Dillon's commitment to our residents and their journey," she said. "Dillon exemplifies resident-focused care. He empowers other team members to enhance their connections with the residents by re-imagining what a care conference can be."

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