Management at Meadow Park Chatham is pleased to see immediate results from their recent dedication to following best practices guidelines from the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO).
Jessica Francis, co-director of care, said the long-term care facility on Sandys Street in Chatham is now listed as a Best Practice Spotlight Organization (BPSO) by the RNAO.
“We were accepted in February and started implementing in May,” she said.
BPSO guidelines help health-care facilities improve on patient care.
“They put out guidelines, for example one that tells us the best way to manage pain, or to prevent falls,” Francis said. “Right now, we’re focused on falls, before going on to pain and pressure wounds. We’re going to take these guidelines and start implementing them.”
Francis said Meadow Park personnel began by analyzing what the staff were doing well and where improvements were most needed.
Meadow Park is involved in a three-year program, and looks to Tilbury Manor, also a BPSO, as an example of a local success story.
“Tilbury Manor has been involved for three years. They have implemented 17 guidelines in three years,” she said. “We have three years to implement our three guidelines (fall prevention, pain management and pressure wound prevention).”
Francis said Meadow Park, Tilbury Manor and the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance are the only three local participants to date in the BPSO effort.
To celebrate progress and to share their successes, Meadow Park staff recently hosted a barbecue and held an open information event.
“We did this to get the information out to our community partners, our members and their families,” Francis said.
The June 27 event saw sunny skies and great attendance.
“We had a very good turnout, more than who RSVP’d,” Francis said. “A lot of people were interested to learn about the areas they’ll be seeing changes in.”
Francis said Meadow Park personnel will continue to focus on fall prevention in the short term.
“Once we feel that we have implemented things and are satisfied with what we’ve done, we’ll start looking at pain management and how we can improve in that area,” she said.
In terms of fall prevention, Francis said the facility now has hourly rounding, where staff check on all residents at least once an hour.
Each resident will be assessed for one of the “4 Ps” – Pain, Positioning, Personal needs, and Potty.
Pain can cause a resident to shift locations, and could lead to a fall. If regularly accessed items are just out of reach, a resident might just try to lean further to grab the item, and that too could cause a tumble.
Ditto for attending to personal needs or using the washroom – “potty.”
Francis said staff are already seeing positive results from the changes that have been implemented.
Keeping an eye on the “4 Ps” should help with other guidelines, Francis added. For example, regular trips to the washroom could help reduce pressure wounds – bedsores.
“Pressure wounds are often caused by moisture. If everything is clean and dry, we can reduce wounds that way,” she said. “We do this as a team – even our housekeeping and dietary staff round. This aims to reduce and manage pain, pressure injuries, and falls. Results have been positive so far.”
According to the RNAO, the BPSO program is “a dynamic partnership that focuses on making a positive impact on patient care though evidence-based practice. The BPSO initiative has been a great success. It provides support to organizations that have formally agreed to implement and evaluate multiple RNAO best practice guidelines over a three-year period.”
First launched in 2003, the BPSO initiative is an offshoot of the RNAO’s Nursing Best Practice Guideline program which began in November 1999 and has since spread across Canada and to countries around the world.
Francis said Meadow Park’s reasoning for taking part is quite simple.
“Our goal – to enhance the quality of life for our residents to the best of our ability,” she said.
