Balance in life needed for long-term care staff
Take time for yourself, former chaplain recommends
Friday April 4, 2008 -- Deron Hamel
Caring for others begins with the way caregivers look after themselves. This was Jane Bryenton’s message to attendees at a March 20 Four Counties Long-Term Care Palliative Network workshop held in Peterborough.

Bryenton, a retired palliative care chaplain at Peterborough Regional Health Centre, likens caring for residents in long-term care homes to using oxygen masks on airplanes during changes in cabin pressure — you need to put yours on before helping others.

When caregivers reach an uncomfortable stress level or become tired or unhappy in their personal lives it can affect the care they give residents.

To avoid this, Bryenton underscores that staff members in long-term care homes always need to take time to ensure their psychological, physical and spiritual needs are consistently being met.

This means caregivers need to take personal time when they need it, celebrate achievements, eat properly and get exercise.

Happy and healthy staff members help keep residents happy and healthy. Balance in life, she says, is the key to achieving a positive outcome.

“It’s like a scale between work, home and personal time,” she tells The Morning Report. “If you are well-cared for then you’re enabled to care better for another.”

When staff members don’t have this balance, she adds, they can become ineffective caregivers, negative about their work, frustrated, angry and depressed.

Bryenton said she hopes attendees came away from the workshop with increased knowledge of the importance of balance in life.

“I hope (attendees) are now better able to recognize the imbalance versus the balance in their lives and act on it, and make a little plan to do something different to lead them towards a healthy balance.”

Nancy Rooney, administrator at Caressant Care on McLaughlin Road, in Lindsay, says she found Bryenton’s presentation to be enlightening.

She agrees with Bryenton’s assertion that staff members in long-term care homes often don’t take enough time for themselves.

“Sometimes we need to stop and think about ourselves,” she said. “In a busy lifestyle sometimes we don’t step back and take care of ourselves. As caregivers we care for everyone else first and put ourselves last on the list.”

The Four Counties Palliative Care Network holds five workshops annually to discuss best practices in palliative care in long-term care homes. The network consists of representatives from long-term care homes in Peterborough, Haliburton, Northumberland and Kawartha Lakes counties.

As a staff member in a long-term care home do you have any tips or suggestions that can help caregivers ensure they get enough time for themselves? If so, please contact deron(at)axiomnews.ca.

If you have feedback on this story, please call the newsroom at (800) 294-0051 or e-mail deron(at)axiomnews.ca.