EXPANDED CARE MODEL

Hotel-dieu Grace expands patient-care to include designated volunteer provider

Doors opening for families

An innovative program borne out of COVID-19 pandemic-based visitor restrictions is reshaping the care model for patients at Hotel-dieu Grace Healthcare.

Called the Co-ordinated Care Program, it has expanded patient-care teams to include a designated care partner — currently all are family members — who is allowed to spend up to two hours a day in hospital, helping to provide emotional and/or physical care for their loved one, alongside nurses, physicians and other staff.

Joe Karb, vice-president of restorative care at Hotel-dieu Grace Healthcare, said the designated care partners receive two hours of classroom-style training that includes hands-on practice putting on personal protective equipment such as gloves, masks, gowns and face shields, and instruction on the program itself, before they begin. Hospital staff members work with the volunteers on the floor.

“The patients benefit because it’s actually loved ones that are providing care,” Karb said, adding that family have always provided some level of patient care — either at home or when visiting in hospital. But the swiftness of the COVID -19 pandemic and its ensuing restrictions of no visitor access required quick action.

“The COVID-19 crisis actually leapfrogged us a bit in terms of implementation a lot quicker than we would have anticipated,” he said. “But we had always thought of a program similar to this because we really see this running outside of even any sort of pandemic response.

“Our intention would be that we actually don’t go back to a point where we are fully restricting to zero visitation,” he added. “We would be looking at the designated-care-partner program, like the co-ordinated-care program, as an augmentation of care delivery. It really is changing the care-delivery model.”

So far, 30 patients have received this extended care under the program and the hope is to introduce another 20 designated care partners into the hospital over the next few weeks. They provide physical care such as help feeding a person a meal or shaving them or they may provide emotional or cognitive support.

Barb Masotti, chairwoman of the patient and family advisory council, worked with the team to write the ethical components of the program and to add a “family voice” to the plan of action.

“The hospital has its perspective and then we see it through the eyes of the patients and the family,” Masotti said. “We looked at a lot of ethics when it came to this. Life is complex and to continue with no visitors, we know what kind of a toll that takes on people.

“It’s a safe way in,” she said. “If we ever have to go through anything like this again, I don’t think we’ll ever have to go to no visitors. We’ll have something in place that’s workable.”

Masotti said the feedback she’s received from participants has been extremely positive, that they are grateful that their loved ones haven’t had to be completely alone in hospital. As well, the experience has prepared them to care for their family member after discharge.

“We envision this just expanding,” Karb said.

With 259 beds at the Malden Park campus, “we can foresee every one of those people identifying a designated care partner.”