|
A Fresh Approach to Delivering Quality December 2011- Have you ever gone out for dinner with friends, found the food rather boring, and yet you wound up having the time of your life? asks Pat Morden, a Hamilton-based life coach. Could it be that the company made up for the tasteless food? The atmosphere was relaxing? The service was great? Fortunately, the good can outweigh the bad when it comes to eating out. Now apply that to the long-term care setting, where nothing matters more to residents than the relationships they share with other residents and staff. Pat suggests looking at quality a little differently. “Quality is not about what we don't want. That's the easy part. It's about what we do want,” she says. “We need more than quality improvement data in long-term care. We need leaders to move the quality agenda forward.” Pat is one of those leaders. At age 60, she has landed her dream job as a full-time life coach in her own business, Stone Hill Farm. She was formerly the CEO of Shalom Village, a long-term care home in Hamilton, and she has worked with Health Quality Ontario on its Residents First quality initiative. Most long-term care staff are loving people, she says, but many are afraid to listen to their own hearts while at work. “We need to have more conversations about what we do want, so that staff can understand what the lived experience is. We need to give them a barometer so they'll know if what they are saying and doing is making people feel at home. Often, staff don't feel confident.” She looks forward to assisting long-term care home administrators with their quality initiatives. She can be reached at (519) 369-1104 or by email: Pat was the guest speaker at the 2011 annual general meeting of Concerned Friends. |