Our Journey So Far
Over the years, we have seen a change in the needs and level of acuity of people coming to residential care. Meanwhile, our care homes are getting older, and as a system, we have not been able to keep pace with the changing needs of our residents. Having heard and experienced these challenges, a group of Providence Health Care leaders started the Residential Care for Me journey in March of 2014.
Phase 1: Insights
The purpose of the first phase was to understand the experience of residential care from the perspective of residents, family and staff. This step is used to clarify and reframe the problem.
Watch this video to see more about our journey so far and the results of our first phase of work:
English version:
Cantonese version:
This opportunity map outlines the various principles that will help us achieve our vision (Click to enlarge):
Phase 2: Ideation
Three opportunities have been identified as our priorities moving forward:
1) Flow of the day driven by what is meaningful for residents instead of the traditional, institutional routine
An ideation session was held in September, 2015, bringing together over 90 people from PHC’s residential care community to brainstorm ideas on how to make our homes less institutional and more person-directed. (Click on the photos below to enlarge)
Click here for a summary of the day: http://phcnews.ca/news/ideation-action
2) Environment of comfort and empowerment
Brock Fahrni has worked with students from Emily Carr’s Health Design Lab on this opportunity. The team of students held two co-creation sessions with the residents, staff and family at Brock Fahrni. In the first session, participants were given the opportunity to provide feedback on some preliminary ideas. These ideas were then revised and brought back at a second session for Brock Fahrni residents, families and staff to choose their favourite ideas to prototype.
A Masters of Design for Human Health student is also worked with the team at Mount Saint Joseph Residential to look at opportunities for improvement in the current facility.
A Masters of Design for Human Health student is also working with the team at Mount Saint Joseph Residential to look at opportunities for improvement in the current facility.
3) Models for physician care that enable relationships
The residential care physician group is working on defining a future state for the Residential Care medical practice at PHC that would build on our strong existing model. Some of the changes will be in line with changes occurring elsewhere in the region, while others will keep us at the forefront of exceptional resident care.
The physician group is in the process of brainstorming the future state.
Phase 3: Prototyping
1) Flow of the day driven by what’s meaningful for residents instead of traditional, institutional routine
Weekly meetings took place at Holy Family Hospital for a year to look at opportunities to increase flexibility and resident choice around how their day unfolds. The findings and learnings from this work has led to the creation of Megamorphosis (click on the link for more information)
2) Environment of comfort and empowerment
Students from the Emily Carr Health Design lab created prototypes that were tested at Brock Fahrni. Feedback was gathered from residents, families and staff around:
- Motion-sensored lighting
- Creating “doorways” that give a sense of home and privacy
- Room dividers to help create privacy while allowing for personalization
In January, 2017, we received grant funding from the Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation (www.ccabhi.com) to further refine and test the motion-sensored lighting. Now named, illuminAID, we once again worked with the Emily Carr Health Design Lab to learn from residents and staff how lighting is used at night and how we could create a motion-sensored system that could improve safety for residents who get out of bed and night and the staff who check on them. Testing of the prototype was done at Brock Fahrni with positive results. The team is now testing out how the system would work in a private bedroom at Youville.
