Here at the Veterans Centre, the resident is the centre of all that we do in our care.
We work together as a team including our residents and families to help each resident achieve
his or her best possible life experience
As the largest Veterans Care facility in Canada, we need to make sure that the care we provide
is consistent, effective and safe across all seventeen units here in the Veterans Centre.
You really can’t provide excellence in care without having a high functioning team.
So my role as a physiotherapist is ah really talking about and focusing on function and
physical functioning
Our veterans here have goals that they’d like to attain. They want to sustain the physical
functioning that they have. So it’s my role to access that and then share it back to the
team
Here when we practice and when we do any kind of assessment or intervention it’s very
important to share the information not only with the resident but have open lines of communication
with the family, because often times the family can help facilitate progression and function,
for example would you mind buying a pair of shoes that might be you know make it easier
to walk around
There might be some sort of inquiry about how do you find your mom or dad or loved one,
is that different from yesterday or last week, because their input is really important and
crucial to how I do my work
The nursing care is unbelievable it’s fabulous and both Bev and I have worked in several
hospitals so we’re pretty good judges
Ah the other thing though it’s the warmth, and the caring and the love is visceral. It’s
from day one everyone we ran into treated us like the most important people in the world
and it was a family atmosphere, it wasn’t just dad and we weren’t just family. The
communication amongst them all is just, like nothing gets left out. They communicate so
well, everything just runs so smoothly
And one thing I’m impressed with to, is they’ll have a family conference every six
months or something and everybody’s there, doctor, pharmacy, physio, nurses, everybody
and you know what everybody’s involved, it’s more like a family than an institution
It really is.
And dad’s been very happy and often says what a wonderful place this is.
So as a nurse working with the interprofessional team members means understanding each other,
supporting each other, and respecting each other. We consult with each other on behalf
of the residents and their family members, we collaborate together as a team to work
in order to provide the patients with optimum care.
So the ultimate goal of the interprofessional team is to provide the best life experience
for our residents and their families.
Each and every one of the vets is an individual and as a team every member of the team they
learn and they know what their likes are, what their needs are and as a nurse I’ve
been so impressed with the care.
It’s really quite amazing the number of interprofessional team members that veterans
can tap into for their needs while they live here. This can range from anything to speech
language pathology, to pharmacy, to obviously medicine, to creative arts therapy, there
is at least 12 different interprofessional professionals that work here to help really
inhance the quality of life for our residents.
I am so pleased to be able to launch our new Veterans Centre Model of Care, which encompasses
partnership, collaboration and teamwork to achieve the very highest quality of care and
a wonderful quality of work life for our staff.
Here at the Veterans Centre together we care.