Best Practices

This simple tool helps clinical staff quickly assess a resident’s needs and adapt their care practices accordingly.

These boxes can be filled with anything that brings the resident joy in their life, including photographs, newspaper clippings, mementos from home, souvenirs from trips, and items from past hobbies or professions (e.g., cooking utensils, ballpoint pen, stethoscope, etc.). Family members can also bring items to fill the box. The boxes have a glass side, so the items are displayed for anyone who walks by. These boxes encourage residents to be creative in describing themselves using objects, but they can also be used to help calm residents with dementia. The implementation of these boxes has also proven to spark conversation between residents, as they find connection through common experiences.

Certain residents have a small or non-existent social network outside of the Wales Home, and thus need some quality one-on-one attention from someone inside the facility. The NOLIDA program ensures that residents’ social needs are met. Management take residents outside or for walks inside the building, and activities are performed daily. If a resident does not wish to attend structured activities in common areas, caregivers on the unit will conduct activities with them in the comfort of their own room or unit.

The RTLS is designed to keep residents autonomous as long as possible, while simultaneously ensuring safety and peace of mind. This system does so through tags, which residents wear in the form of bracelets or necklaces, on which there is a button. When a resident needs assistance, they need only press the button, and a duress alert is sent directly to employees’ iPods. Employees receive alerts through the Mobile View application, which tells them which resident needs assistance and provides them with a map of the building, pinpointing the resident’s exact location. The employee can thus proceed to the resident immediately; once the resident has been helped, the employee cancels the alert, signalling to other employees that the resident no longer needs assistance. As this system works inside and outside the building, residents with mobility issues can confidently venture outside, independently or with assistance, and ring if they need help getting back indoors. This system simultaneously helps the Wales Home keep its residents independent and ensures security and safety.

Most seniors’ residences and CHSLDs have strict mealtimes and routines, requiring residents to get up in the morning and go to bed at night at specific, predetermined times. While efficient, these types of cycles are not realistic, as everyone has different sleeping preferences. Certain people are “night owls,” and like to stay up late, while others are “early birds,” who prefer rising with the sun, and others still are a variation of the two. The Wales Home thus sought to customize the sleep experience to each individual resident’s needs; now, residents go to sleep when they want, and wake up when they want, so long as they are getting a healthy amount of sleep. This new Sleep Program produced a marked improvement in waking hours as well, as residents are more alert during the day and more content with their sleep schedule and can thus devote more energy to waking hours. Caregivers and Activity Coordinators work to ensure ample activities are available during waking hours, so that residents can keep their minds and bodies occupied and satisfied to the fullest while awake.

These dolls were donated by family member Cathy Watson, who named the babies after her parents, Alison and Grant, both of whom passed away at the Wales Home and CHSLD Wales. Like the battery-operated pets, these dolls invoke calm and serenity. Residents feel useful and important when caring for the doll and, for many, the dolls bring back fond memories of when their own children and grandchildren were small. These dolls provide a safe and effective means of keeping these residents occupied and content. During the CHSLD expansion and renovation, a nursery was created for the dolls on Norton 1.

These animals brighten the residents’ days and remind them of a time when they too had pets or farm animals. Ann Caroline’s animals provide endless cuddles and leave residents smiling for the rest of the day! Ferme Frosttie Farm also brings some of their animals to the Wales Home every summer, so the Wales has its very own petting zoo! Residents can take care of the animals themselves, or just observe them when sitting by the pond.