Health and wellness month: talking about health issues at Council meetings
Par Family Councils Ontario
At FCO, February is health and wellness month! Throughout this month, we’ll be focussing our blog posts on health and wellness issues that affect LTC residents and families. This series of posts will help your Council achieve its goals of educating families of residents and supporting Council members.
To kick off the series, we’re sharing an excerpt from our upcoming new resource on how to gather information on and talk about health issues at Council meetings. This new resource is part of our package of osteoporosis knowledge exchange resources that are being developed in partnership with GERAS and Osteoporosis Canada, supported by a resource review committee composed of Family Council members.
Tips for discussing health issues at Family Council meetings
- Consider having a guest speaker on the topic. They will be able to provide accurate information and answer questions attendees have. Examples: the home’s nutrition manager attends a Council meeting to discuss dietary interventions to ensure that all residents receive enough dietary calcium, or a speaker from the local Parkinson’s Society attends a meeting to discuss preventing falls in residents with Parkinson’s.
- Always respect residents’ dignity and privacy. Do not discuss residents’ health concerns or other sensitive issues without permission, especially if other residents are in the room.
- Use reputable sources of information. Not all information you find online is accurate or reliable, so consider getting information from an organization like Osteoporosis Canada or GERAS. Consider running information by an in-home expert to make sure it is accurate e.g. your home’s Director of Care or Administrator.
- Keep discussions positive and productive. It’s important to properly facilitate the discussion to ensure that they don’t veer into negative or unproductive territory.
- Never assume. Always get accurate and reliable information.
- Remember that one person’s experience may be true but not necessarily the norm.
- Remember that this is a sensitive topic and treat the discussion and people with respect.
- Set ground rules and desired outcomes for the discussion. For example, confidentiality: what is said in the meeting stays in the meeting.
- Leave time at the end to debrief and end the meeting on a positive note.
Discussing health issues at Council meetings can be difficult but our soon-to-be released guide will help you do that in a way that is productive and supportive.
Stay tuned for next week’s entry in our health and wellness series!
Photo by Eric Didier on UnSplash