News

Teamwork and perseverance are moving COVID ‘mountains’

April 28th, 2021

General managers, team leaders, and others from across Points West Living and Connecting Care gathered recently to meet, catch their breath and regroup. It’s been more than a year since COVID-19 emerged as a deadly threat, and triggered a revolution in the way we live. The April 21-22 virtual conference offered affirmation, support, and motivation to those frontline leaders who put life-saving protocols into place while nurturing the spirit of those in their care.

'Moving Mountains'

The conference was called ‘Moving Mountains’, and covered everything from Eden inspiration to changes in technology (including how best to work from home), to recreation pivots, ageism, cultural diversity, and more. PWL Peace River's GM, David Haastrup co-hosted the conference with Jay Adams (Providence Place) in Daysland.

Highlights

For PWL Stettler General Manager, Carol Dyck, the highlight of the two day conference was the presentation by Paul Preston an Edmonton based psychologist. “His presentation identified the difficulty of COVID and the challenges we faced,” says Carol “He was very authentic and sincere and knew his stuff. He talked about self care, exercise and how to get the stamina to keep going. I found it very self validating.”

Resiliant recreation teams

The conference participants also heard from Recreation Therapists. “There were different videos presented illustrating how resilient recreation teams had to be to overcome COVID restrictions, and how they love the residents,” says Carol. “Their lives were turned upside down [by COVID] with no groups coming in, how they had to do activities in different cottages. They’ve had to do more with less.”

“They were very creative and very successful, and post-COVID we may hold on to some of the changes,” adds Carol. “More people were coming out for the smaller group activities; they didn’t like the big groups. The recreation teams ‘moved that mountain’.”

“The panel discussion on ageism was amazing,” adds Carol. “One resident got a chuckle when he made the comment, ‘It was much easier being 20 in the seventies than 70 in the twenties!’”

General managers; specific issues

Carol notes that this was the first PWL/CC conference that was organized and run by the general managers rather than corporate Home Office, and as such, it focused on many issues that impact frontline operations.

Photo: PWL Peace River's GM, David Haastrup (right) co-hosted the conference with Jay Adams (left) (Providence Place, Daysland). According to Carol, the two were “entertaining and fun, keeping things moving along.”