Providence awards show it 'cares for their staff'

By LAUREEN McMAHON

Fun can be a serious business, says Felix Saldanha, a rehabilitation assistant at St. Vincent’s, Langara, and Brock Fahrni Pavilion.

Saldanha believes a major key to the health and the mental and spiritual well being of the senior residents in his care is having fun, so he’s happy to don a campy Halloween costume to entertain them or go the extra mile organizing Happy Hours and birthday parties where having a good time is the aim.

This year’s winner of the Providence Health Care Mission Award, Saldanha says he measures job success in the numbers of smiles he sees on their faces when he drives the seniors to parks or beaches in the Providence bus or arranges sing-alongs and concerts in the lounge.

The self-admitted "people person" was once tied to a 9 to 5 job where his small amount of contact with people left him frustrated.

On the advice of a friend, he took the Therapeutic Recreation program at Douglas College and, six years ago, joined the staff of Providence.

Saldanha’s days are now filled with great relationships with the older adults he loves to be around. He gets his biggest kicks, he said, from discovering new activities for them to enjoy.

"What I used to do as a volunteer, I now get paid for," Saldanha told The B.C. Catholic with a big grin. "I believe that if you don’t have fun at your work, it shows. Just greeting everyone with a smile is important."

"Do your best on the job," Saldanha advised, "but take time to refresh yourself as well. I am fortunate here because Providence really cares for their staff. It’s a great atmosphere and very rewarding. I am grateful to everyone for this recognition."

Each year Providence asks staff, residents, families, and volunteers to submit the names of employees who consistently live the PHC mission and are models for others.

Saldanha, who received no less than four nominations, received the Mission Award at the Providence June 14 AGM from President and CEO Carl Roy and Board Chairwoman Sandra Heath.

The winner of this year’s Providence Foundress Award was St. Paul’s Psychiatry Consult Liaison Team, who were also honoured at the AGM.

Team members Dr. Allan Burgmann, Dr. Carole Richford, Dr. Stephen Fitzpatrick, and Karen Malfesi-Merritt have spearheaded a "dynamic" approach, said Carl Roy, providing psychiatric consultative services to patients throughout the hospital.

The criteria is that a team has demonstrated the mission and values of the founding congregations of sisters who established the health-care sites in past decades, Roy explained.

The St. Paul’s team is dedicated, said one member, to helping patients see the deep connections between the physical and the emotional, and to counselling patients coping with difficult news or suffering from emotional problems which can accompany a long period of cardiac illness.

On behalf of Archbishop Raymond Roussin, SM, Monsignor Stephen Jensen conducted a missioning ceremony for the Providence Society, Board, and Senior Leadership Team.

This year’s AGM keynote speaker, Father John Tuohey, Chairman of Applied Health Care Ethics at Providence St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Portland, Ore., said promoting integrity in health care is sometimes considered annoying.

"Integrity is not only about the difference between right and wrong, but about the way we do what is right which can be a big challenge in health care. We should hold ourselves to a higher moral standard because of what we say we are."

He illustrated how situations sometimes pose a challenge to the pursuit of integrity, using the example of a Texas hospital which distributed baby formula and coupons to new mothers because the manufacturer, in exchange, promised a free supply of formula to the hospital.

The practice, Father Tuohey explained, flew in the face of recommendations from the American Pediatric Association and other organizations concerned with the health and welfare of newborns.

The issue, he said, proved to be a test of the hospital’s integrity when it was brought to their attention.

"While they had good fiscal reasons to continue the practice, and it fell within legal boundaries and wasn’t in the strictest sense ‘wrong,’ they were bound to go that extra mile to do what is strictly right by discontinuing the practice," said Father Tuohey.

Integrity has four key elements: honesty, reliability or dependability, fairness, and accountability, Father Tuohey explained.

"Our mission and our integrity depend upon incorporating these things. Integrity is like our warranty, the promise we make to those we serve that we will embrace the highest moral ground when it comes to decisions affecting care.

"There must be no other way."