eConnections - February 2023

February 2023

Providence Care awarded Accreditation

with Exemplary Standing

Providence Care has been awarded Accreditation with Exemplary Standing by Accreditation Canada. The designation is the highest award possible through the hospital accreditation program.

“Despite the challenges faced by our staff and physicians as a result of the pandemic, they continued to provide high quality, compassionate care to the people we serve,” said Cathy Szabo, President & CEO. “This award is a testament to the commitment of our staff, physicians and volunteers. It is an honour to see their work recognized.”

Accreditation is an ongoing process of assessing health care and social services organizations against rigorous standards of excellence to identify what is being done well and what needs to be improved. From Nov. 21 to 24, 2022 surveyors from Accreditation Canada visited Providence Care to evaluate the organization on how well it performs against national standards of excellence for quality and safety.

Providence Care earned its Exemplary Standing by meeting 100 per cent of Accreditation Canada’s Required Organizational Practices (ROPs), critical quality practices that ensure safe, quality patient care. ROPs are categorized across six safety areas: safety culture, communication, medication use, infection control, work-life/workforce and risk assessment.

In addition, Providence Care met 98.9 per cent of the standards of excellence against which we were evaluated. These standards ensure service excellence in medication management, infection prevention and control, leadership and more.

Arlene Gallant-Bernard, the Accreditation Canada lead surveyor was impressed, saying: “The work here is most excellent – we witnessed inspiring teamwork, collaboration and the operations of a nimble, responsive organization dedicated to the things that matter most – the people you serve. It’s very rare to see these types of positive results.”

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Recreation Therapists help patients thrive at Providence Transitional Care Centre

77-year-old Anna poses with Recreation Therapist Gabrielle Noonan.

In February, Therapeutic Recreation Awareness Month recognizes allied health care professionals who use leisure activities to promote the health, emotional well-being and to improve the quality of life of people living with a disability or who are chronically ill.

At Providence Transitional Care Centre (PTCC), Recreation Therapists are making a difference for patients by providing meaningful therapeutic recreation activities including social interactions, exercise programs, opportunities to share knowledge and opinions and to engage in creative processes and inspirational programming.A patient sits with Gabrielle Noonan, a Recreation Therapist at PTCC

For 77-year-old Anna, being transferred to PTCC after a fall at home and short stay at Kingston General Hospital, was quite unnerving. Residing in an apartment building, Anna had access to a supportive community of peers and a variety of tools to be creative at home. She says having access to similar activities while in the hospital has drastically helped her recovery and healing journey.

“Getting together with others is so therapeutic for me. And thanks to Gabrielle, there’s something going on for us almost every day,” says Anna, whose nerves settled upon arrival.

Anna is referring to Gabrielle Noonan, a Recreation Therapist at PTCC. “We want to give our patients the opportunity to use leisure as a tool in their lives; whether through giving back to the community, spending time on their holistic wellness or using it as a positive and meaningful outlet for their time,” explains Gabrielle.

Working alongside Recreation Therapist Braelyn Vinkle, the duo is responsible for organizing activities for patients at the 60-bed Transitional Care Centre. Anna is a regular participant no matter the activity. She has assisted in multiple clothing drives, cat toy making for the Kingston Humane Society, painting pumpkins, making jewelry, playing trivia and bingo and much more. Most recently, Anna helped create 75 homemade Valentines for Veterans Affairs Canada who distributed them to residents in long-term care homes around the country.

“I can’t imagine landing anywhere else. We are so looked after here. I’ve made many friends and Gabrielle keeps us busy with her workshops and things to do,” states Anna.

As Anna prepares to return home, it’s not goodbye. Additional provincial funding has created the Providence Care Transitions Home Program. This pilot program aims to enhance a patient’s continuity of care through extending therapy services from hospital into the community.

The program creates a seamless and safe transition home, enhances the patient and family experience and reduces length of stay in hospital.

Healthcare professionals including Physiotherapy (PT), Occupational Therapy (OT), PT/OT Assistants, Recreation Therapists and Behaviour Technologists will provide continuous holistic care from PTCC to the community. Services include pre-discharge home safety assessment, transitional home support and in-home care services.

One of the first times Anna connected with Gabrielle, she asked if a workshop could be organized for her tight-knit community after she returned home. Now, thanks to the new pilot, Gabrielle will continue providing recreation therapy activities for Anna to support her transition home.

“Going home is a huge step for me. I am excited and a little bit scared. It does comfort me to know that Gabrielle will be following me home,” shares Anna. “I am a firm believer in living for the day. Who knows what is going to happen, especially at my age,” she continues.

Best of luck, Anna, in your transition home and happy Therapeutic Recreation Awareness Month to the many dedicated staff and volunteers at Providence Care who provide therapeutic activities each and every day.

Stroke survivor finds continuum of care through community partnership

Terrilyn McLaren uses Lego, her keyboard and her typewriter to help her rebuild strength

and dexterity following a stroke.

At Providence Care Hospital, 34-year-old Terrilyn McLaren surrounds herself with a few of her favourite things. Her typewriter, keyboard and Lego-sets however, do more than what Julie Andrews sings about in her famous song from The Sound of Music. Terrilyn’s favourite things are helping her rebuild the neuropathways in her brain as she focuses on her strength, movement and dexterity, following a stroke she had while on holiday in Vienna, Austria.

“I was on a military mission in the United Kingdom; we were training Ukrainians,” explains the Public Affairs Officer with the Canadian Military. “Because we’d been working without breaks, we were given home-leave. We could go home, or go to another European country, for the holidays. I chose to go to Vienna,” she explains.

Captain McLaren, as she is known while on duty, says she wasn’t feeling well and had extremely bad ear pain when her plane landed, but chalked it up to a common cold. It was on her second day in Vienna when things took a turn for the worse.

“It was the evening and I was tired. I walked out of the bathroom and got so dizzy. I sat down and wondered what was happening to me. I thought it was vertigo,” she describes. “I crawled to the bedroom and started vomiting. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. I took two baths and one shower just trying to feel better. I ended up sleeping, thinking I could sleep it off, but when I woke up, I didn’t feel better.”

Terrilyn decided she needed to call friends and family but her phone was dead. After charging her device, she could turn it on, but none of the swipe functions worked. Alone and feeling as badly as she did, she says luck was on her side.

“I pressed all the buttons on my phone at the same time and somehow called an ambulance. It was really intense.”

Once at the hospital, Terrilyn tested positive for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and was immediately isolated. She was diagnosed with vertigo and underwent an inner-ear surgery. But, after days of not getting better, the doctors ordered more tests.

“A neurologist and three doctors told me it wasn’t vertigo. I actually had a minor stroke caused by an Arterial Dissection.”

An Arterial Disection is a tear along the inside lining of an artery. Terrilyn explains that at the site of the tear, blood can clot like a scab and there is a risk that scab can create an obstruction and limit blood flow to the brain which causes stroke.

“I couldn’t tell you what caused the injury, the Arterial Dissection. It could have been one of a thousand things: coughing from my RSV, lifting heavy bags, stress; there’s no way to single out any one thing.”

After a long and lonely 12 days in the hospital in Vienna, the Canadian military helped Terrilyn get back to Kingston. After seeking care at Kingston Health Sciences Centre, she was transferred to Lakeview 1, the stroke rehabilitation unit at Providence Care Hospital (PCH).

“Things are much better now that I’m here. The staff are very kind and they treat me with respect,” she explains. “I’m learning a lot about the tools I can use when I get home, to find some form of normal. I need to get my balance back.”

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Providence Care's Adult Day Program helps aging adults live at home longer

Poul Busk races against the clock to try and build the tallest candy heart tower with members of the Recreation team.

Every Friday, you can find 72-year-old Kingston resident Poul Busk, at the Adult Day Centre, a community services program offered with Providence Care. It is known to most in the community as the Hildegarde Centre.

Poul participates in two full days of recreation therapy every week with a group of nine other adults and today’s activities include football tosses and candy heart stacking competitions.

“I think this program is wonderful and I really like being a part of it,” says Poul. “I enjoy getting out of the house and I love the comradery of it all.”

The Adult Day Program runs five days a week, Monday through Friday and is geared to adults living in the community with a cognitive impairment like dementia, Alzheimer’s or brain injury. The program also acts as respite care for family members or loved ones who are primary caregivers.

“This is the 44th year of the Hildegarde Centre programing,” says Adult Day Program Coordinator Beth Bruce. “It’s such an honour to get to know our clients and provide them a safe space to build relationships and get them participating in engaging activities.”

The daily goal for the team behind the Adult Day Program is fun of course, but behind the fun, veteran-recreationist Lisa Rishaur says her team is always focusing on keeping the mind and body of the people they care for active.

“We do daily exercises, like typical stretching, strength building or walking but we also do fun physical activities and games like balloon badminton or ball tosses,” explains Lisa. “For the mind, we love trivia, word games and white board games like Pictionary and these guys really love to socialize with each other which is what it’s all about.”

Beth and Lisa both explain how amazing it is to see people build friendships at the centre, adding that every client in their care has interesting stories to share.

Poul is a self-proclaimed live-theatre enthusiast with a wicked sense of humour and jokes about his journey to finding a place in the Adult Day Program that started five years ago.

“I was doing a lot of theatre and it got to a point where I couldn’t remember any of my lines and I thought, something is wrong here,” he explains. “I got diagnosed with dementia and I thought—okay, this makes sense and as I say, I can’t remember a gosh-darn-thing,” he adds laughing.

And it’s not just Poul who likes to let the jokes fly. 70-year-old Fred VanLuven, who also spends his Fridays at the centre and just finished celebrating his big birthday, has a large collection of classic dad-jokes for a willing audience.

“Have you ever tried bowling the Hildegarde way?” he asks. “Literally speaking, you can have a BALL doing it,” he laughs. All jokes aside however, Fred says one of his favourite activities to do at the centre is word puzzles.

“I love when I get word searches to go through and I’m really fast at them, I can look at them and finish them within seconds,” says Fred.

Lisa has been in her role as a recreationist with the Adult Day Program for 16 years and has seen the program develop and change over the years. The biggest change to the program happened in March 2020 when COVID-19 restrictions came into place. The program moved out of the Hildegarde Centre located inside of Providence Manor long-term-care home to its current, temporary, home at Providence Care’s community site located at 525 Montreal Street.

“We really adapted our programming but it hasn’t affected how engaging it is,” Lisa explains. “We do a special activity every day, highlighting holidays and special occasions and incorporating them into our activities,” she adds.

The clients at the Hildegarde Centre become an extended family for the team.

“I get to do what I love every day. I love being with the clients,” says Lisa. “It gives me a purpose to come in here every day and be with them. You get attached, even with the family members of our clients because they’re entrusting us with their loved ones.”

On the outside, the program is fun, engaging and entertaining. The groups share birthdays, holidays, good times and hard. However, at its core, Lisa says recreation therapy and the potential break it provides caregivers, is making a huge difference in the lives of aging adults in our community.

“The one thing I love about this program is that people get to stay in their homes longer and we really get to be our clients’ happy place for the day with the goal being—putting a smile on their face when they go home.”

Recreation therapy provides a safe, fun space for people like Poul and Fred who have been members of the program for a few years now and both say they have no intention of changing how they spend their Friday’s anytime soon.

Providence Care promotes kindness and inclusion and looks good doing it

Teams across Providence Care wear pink on Feb. 23, Pink Shirt Day,

It's known across the world as Pink Shirt Day. Here at Providence Care, staff, physicians, patients, clients, residents and volunteers showed their support on February 23, for the anti-bullying day raising $5,868 for our partners BGC South East and Big Brothers Big Sisters Kingston Frontenac, Lennox and Addington.

The longstanding tradition of buying pink t-shirts and sweaters that promote kindness resumed at Providence Care after being put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. The partnership aims to raise funds for youth programming that fosters self-esteem, inclusion and acceptance.

Pink Shirt Day gear was purchased across the organization at Providence Care Hospital, Providence Transitional Care Centre, Providence Manor long-term-care home and in our Community Services.

The money raised will be reinvested into the Kingston community allowing thousands of local children opportunities to participate in sports, arts, education, and positive development programs.

As an organization that values respect, dignity and compassion, participating in Pink Shirt Day is near and dear to our hearts. Let us be inspired to live PINK- positive, inclusive, nurturing and kind, all year round.

Honour Your Caregiver:

Lakeview 1 Staff

The team on Lakeview 1, a rehabilitation unit at Providence Care Hospital, was recognized with an Honour Your Caregiver certificate from the University Hospitals Kingston Foundation by a grateful donor earlier this month.

The Honour Your Caregiver initiative is a way for patients, clients, residents or their loved ones to celebrate the great care they received while donating funds for equipment, education, research and more.

Donate Today

The University Hospitals Kingston Foundation (UHKF) is the fundraising arm of Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) and Providence Care.

From hospital to home, to community and beyond, every donation to UHKF helps to grow healthcare facilities, equipment, programs, research and education for people across Southeastern Ontario.

Your gift today makes tomorrow's healthcare possible.

Providence Care introduces new job application process

Providence Care has launched a new process and system for job applications.

The applicant tracking system, called Talent Pool Builder, offers an enhanced application process and provides more options for people applying for jobs.

Candidates can now apply by uploading their documents from their computer, writing directly into a text editor or from many popular online providers such as LinkedIn.

“We want to make it easier for people to apply to work at Providence Care and process applications more efficiently,” says Laura Harpell, Director, People Services, Providence Care. “We think this new system will benefit our staff and people applying for jobs.”

The new system also allows job seekers to sign up to receive job alerts. Simply enter your name, email address and the type of job you want to receive alerts about.