March 9 is World Kidney Day, a day celebrated annually across the globe to inform the public about the importance of kidney health. This year’s theme, “Kidney Health for All – Preparing for the unexpected, supporting the vulnerable,” provides an opportunity to raise awareness about kidney health and the impact of disastrous events on people living with kidney disease, whose access to appropriate diagnostic services, treatment, and care may be hindered.
People with kidney disease are among the most vulnerable people in an emergency because of their ongoing need for consistently coordinated care, which is often lifelong and involves complex ongoing treatment.
The impact of COVID-19 on the health system has placed additional strain on this vulnerable population in recent years.
The whole of society, including policymakers, health care services, governments, industry, as well as people living with kidney disease and their caregivers, must be prepared for unexpected events to avoid any disruption in access to diagnosis, treatment, and care.
International Women’s Day (March 8) celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women and girls, and raises awareness of the work that remains. This year’s theme is ‘every woman counts‘, and is a reminder that all women, from all ages and walks of life, have a place in every aspect of Canadian society, including in the economic, social and democratic spheres. We would like to celebrate all the amazing women who work at our Hospital and Health Research Institute, who are committed to professionalism and public service every day. Let their successes encourage our youth and girls that their dreams are within reach.
Our Departmental Features are being run monthly, up to Employee Recognition Week. This initiative aligns with our Hospital’s strategic priority of Staff Experience, by recognizing and celebrating the work that our staff is doing every day. This month we are looking at the Nutrition & Food Services Department! To see past Department of the Months, please visit our Employee Recognition Week web page.
How the Nutrition & Food Services Department runs
It starts with patient admission, then a diet entry into Meditech, this interfaces with CBORD; a piece of software that captures every patient’s dietary information and organizes it into menus and tallies for production. Then comes the patient preferences, sometimes written into the comment section of Meditech, and sometimes after a dietitian referral and appointment, these notes are recorded in the Registered Dietician section. The dietary assistant takes these notes and manually enters them into the patient’s preference section in their card file in CBORD. If any of the notes are not compliant with the patient’s current diet, an email is sent to the dietitian, or a phone call is placed to the unit where the patient is admitted. Sometimes the items are written in if medically appropriate. The dietary assistant prints menus, tallies, records essential numbers for informatics, answers email, cross-checks diet entries and food allergy entries made by ward clerks and medical staff, answers the phone, and assists everyone working in the office and kitchen.
Production (dietary aids, cooks, portioning staff)
Our team takes the tallies produced by CBORD and makes the correct amount of entrees, vegetables, desserts, thickened beverages, fruit portions, hot cereals, sandwiches, and snacks. Production staff pads these numbers to ensure that if the hospital has a population spike, every patient is still fed medically appropriate foods. At tray assembly time (three times a day) the dietary aids make hundreds of trays, each having its unique menu. The room in which they assemble trays is refrigerated to ensure food safety. After a tray is assembled, it is loaded into a retherm cart to be heated to exactly the correct temperature to prevent any foodborne illness. Our supervisors are always taking temperatures of fridges, trays, retherm carts, and dishwashing machines, ensuring that all equipment is in working order, and as a result, the food that is produced by this department is safe for the patients to consume. Once the trays are heated in the retherm carts, they are ready to be delivered to the units. Most units receive bedside tray delivery. Two dietary aids deliver trays to each unit getting a total of 15 minutes to deliver to stay on time. Dietary aids are unable to do bedside delivery for patients on droplet precautions. 1 hour after tray delivery patient’s trays are collected, then stripped and washed. Trays are collected after 1 hour due to food safety policies. Currently, the dish room is being renovated, if you have walked down the hallway leading to Stores, you will have seen us stripping trays along the wall. A portion of our main kitchen was reallocated for a makeshift dish room.
While delivering trays dietary aids will take comments and concerns from patients including preferences and pass this information on to the dietary assistant. Pre-pandemic dietary aids formally took food orders for lunch and dinner and general food preferences utilizing the program, expressly for you and our department are hopeful that we can restart soon. In the interim patients who require food, preferences taken can be reported to the nutrition and food services office and a member of staff will see the patient as soon as possible. More challenges for Food and Nutrition due to the pandemic have been the infant formula shortage and supply chain problems with food suppliers. As a result, when food orders are placed we constantly have to replace staple items such as dry cereal, salt packages, oral supplements, and crackers. Supervisors have had to run to the store and purchase items for the hospital so that patients do not go without them. Another frequent challenge is staffing due to the pandemic, often staff including supervisors are playing multiple roles to ensure the work is completed on time and patient trays are delivered on time, and dishes and workspaces are clean.
Our department, Nutrition, and Food Services, is complicated, ever changing, and full of daily challenges, but I am proud of all that we accomplish. My coworkers work as a team and stay true to our mission statement of patient-centered care. Dietary aides, cooks, dietary assistants, Registered Dietitians, food service supervisors, and our managers are always willing to answer a question, an email, or jump into the kitchen and wash dishes or cut up vegetables or deliver a tray after cut-off time to a hungry patient. Our team works hard, completes daily tasks with determination and intelligence, and are always willing to do a little something extra for a patient or a co-worker.
On Wear Blue Day (March 3), staff at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and Thunder Bay Regional Health Research Institute wore blue to raise awareness for Colon Cancer Awareness Month.
If you are between 50 to 74 years of age, and have no family history of colon cancer, you should complete a fecal immunochemical test (FIT) kit every 2 years.
To get your FIT kit, talk to your health care provider. If you don’t have a health care provider, you can get a kit by calling Health811 at 1-866-828-9213 or by making an appointment on the Screen for Life Coach by calling (807) 684-7777.
Julia in Physiotherapy – 6 Months of Free Parking Neil in Emergency – 6 Months of Free Parking Lisa in Patient Food Services – Bose Noise Canceling Headphones Vahini in Lab – $25 Gift Card Carmela in Housekeeping – $25 Gift Card Jodi in Emergency – $25 Gift Card Kirsten in ECG – $25 Gift Card Christy in Interventional and Angio – $25 Gift Card Nicole in 3CN – $25 Gift Card Deb in Emergency – $25 Gift Card Christine in Health Records – $25 Gift Card Curtis in Northwest Health Network – $25 Gift Card Keenan in Systemic Oncology – $25 Gift Card Sally in Cardiac Cath Lab – $25 Gift Card Anna in Emergency – $25 Gift Card Kelly in Screening – $25 Gift Card Patricia in NRT – $25 Gift Card Katie in Labour and Delivery – $25 Gift Card Celine in OR – $25 Gift Card Suzanne in Endo – $25 Gift Card Brooke in NRT – $25 Gift Card Amanda in Lab – $25 Gift Card Angie in Health Records – $25 Gift Card Ashley in Security – $25 Gift Card Michelle in AMH – $25 Gift Card Cynthia in Lab – $25 Gift Card Laura in 1A – $25 Gift Card Jamie in ICU – Car Emergency Kit Rita in Staffing – Car Emergency Kit
And… drumroll please… Barb in Health Records is our Employee Recognition Week grand prize winner! She won a $1500 prepaid Mastercard. Congratulations Barb!
Shared on behalf of Bonnie Nicholas, Manager, Patient and Family Centred Care
Patient experience surveys are an important tool for our organization to hear the voices of our patients and community utilizing our services. It helps us understand what we are doing well and where we have opportunities to do things differently.
Technology practices and advances have made the traditional practice of sending patients a paper-based survey through the mail increasingly expensive and less attractive. Our previous patient experience survey provider, NRC Picker, discontinued services to Canadian organizations effective March 31, 2022. As such, Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC) has decided to move to Qualtric XM. They are a global leading Experience Management (XM) vendor that provides a digital platform for patient experience surveys (e.g., email, text messages, QR Code) that effectively and efficiently captures patients’ perceptions of their health care experience.
Electronic surveying is a method where the invitation to participate is sent via email or SMS using a URL link embedded in the email/message that allows the patient to go directly to the survey.
There are several advantages to adopting a digital method for patient experience surveys:
Patients can receive the survey in a timely manner, potentially increasing response rate and TBRHSC can receive quicker results
Portable, allowing the patients to complete anywhere, anytime
Results are automatically uploaded into system and available real-time, enabling cause/effect analysis
What you need to know:
The process for collecting email addresses/phone numbers in Meditech will be streamlined.
Asking the patient if they would like to participate will still be a mandatory field, but email, phone and consent date will be saved to future visits to limit the data entry should the patient want to participate again.
There will be upcoming education regarding the changes specific for registration points.
On day five of Employee Recognition Week, we want to thank everyone for their participation!
The draw for six months of free parking and dozens of other prizes will take place on Friday with our Grand Prize draw of a $1,500 Mastercard. Continue to participate in Daily Trivia and Recognition O’Grams for more chances to win. Free coffee will be taking place tomorrow morning by the Cafeteria, as well as it being the final day for submission of Recognition O’Grams before Friday’s delivery.
Here is a list of our daily draw winners from Thursday:
Kanika in Emergency – $25 Gift Card Krista in Systemic Oncology – $25 Gift Card Breanne in Emergency – $25 Gift Card Stefani in W&C Resource Team – $25 Gift Card Mallory in Hemo – $25 Gift Card Michelle in Lab – $25 Gift Card Tina in Lab – $25 Gift Card Kyle in Patient Food Services – $25 Gift Card Crystal in Lab – $25 Gift Card Shawna in Laundry – $25 Gift Card Danielle in Peritoneal Dialysis – $25 Gift Card Erin in ICU – $25 Gift Card Dawn in Lab – $25 Gift Card Jasmine in MNB – $25 Gift Card Christina in Housekeeping – $25 Gift Card Natasha in MDRD – $25 Gift Card Sondra in Information Services – $25 Gift Card Shannan in Labour and Delivery – $25 Gift Card Zach in Emergency – $25 Gift Card Alexis in Base Hospital – $25 Gift Card Bronte in Emergency – $25 Gift Card Kellee in Labour and Delivery – $25 Gift Card Leanne in Genetics Counseling – $25 Gift Card Donna in Rec Therapy – $25 Gift Card Ashley in Social Work – $25 Gift Card Ashley in OR – $25 Gift Card Jennifer in MDRD – $25 Gift Card Jennifer in Radiation Therapy – $25 Gift Card
Here is a list of our daily draw winners from Wednesday:
Alyssa in ACT Team – $25 Gift Certificate Lisa in Radiation Therapy – $25 Gift Certificate Kirsten in Pharmacy – $25 Gift Certificate Rhonda in Housekeeping – $25 Gift Certificate Kerstin in NRT – $25 Gift Certificate Jason in Patient Food Services – $25 Gift Certificate Heather in 2B – $25 Gift Certificate Shawna in Laundry – $25 Gift Certificate Lisa in NW Health Network – $25 Gift Certificate Selena in NRT – $25 Gift Certificate Janette in Systemic Oncology – $25 Gift Certificate Jennifer in MDRD – $25 Gift Certificate Bryan in Emergency – $25 Gift Certificate Larry in Pharmacy – $25 Gift Certificate Ryan in OR – $25 Gift Certificate Cheryln in Paeds – $25 Gift Certificate Rowan in Screening – $25 Gift Certificate Cassandra in ICU – $25 Gift Certificate Joanne in Health Records – $25 Gift Certificate Patricia in Utilization Management – $25 Gift Certificate Lindsay in Nutrition – $25 Gift Certificate Laurel in Maternal Newborn – $25 Gift Certificate Shelley in Wound Care – $25 Gift Certificate Heather in Utilization Management – $25 Gift Certificate Diane in Rad Oncol Treatment Planning – $25 Gift Certificate Angelina in Ultrasound – $25 Gift Certificate Cassandra in ICU – $25 Gift Certificate Colin in 2A – $25 Gift Certificate Jessica in Housekeeping – $25 Gift Certificate Elisa in Social Work – $25 Gift Certificate Stephanie in Respiratory Therapy – $25 Gift Certificate Alanna in W&C Resource Team – $25 Gift Certificate Darolyn in Respiratory Therapy – $25 Gift Certificate Andrew in 3CN – $25 Gift Certificate
Here is a list of our daily draw winners from Monday and Tuesday: Jennifer in Strategy and Performance – $50 Gift Certificate Tracy in Staffing – $50 Gift Certificate Susan in Health Records – $50 Gift Certificate Stephanie in Nutrition and Food Services – $50 Gift Certificate Monique in NRT – $50 Gift Certificate Jodi in MDRD – $50 Gift Certificate Meagan in Emergency – $50 Gift Certificate Jason in IT – Nespresso Machine Haripradsad in Biomedical – Echo Dot Samantha in Interventional and Angio – Private Yoga Sessions Jeff in ICU – Ninja Blender Carrie in Housekeeping – Gift Basket Isabella in NRT – Gift Basket Tiana in Health Records – Gift Basket Brittany in 1A – Gift Basket Karen in Forensics – $50 Gift Certificate Kayla in OR – $50 Gift Certificate Dawn in Lab – $50 Gift Certificate Nancy in Infection Control – $50 Gift Certificate Raymond in MDRD – $25 Gift Certificate Annette in Admin – $25 Gift Certificate Jennifer in ICU – $25 Gift Certificate Danny in MDRD – $25 Gift Certificate Deidre in AMH – $25 Gift Certificate Helen in Maternal Newborn – $25 Gift Certificate Joanne in Amb Care – $25 Gift Certificate Danielle in 1A – $25 Gift Certificate Lindsay in Labour & Delivery – $25 Gift Certificate Jonathan in IT – $25 Gift Certificate
Thank you for everything you do and Happy Employee Recognition Week!
Many people in Northwestern Ontario are still not completing the recommended screening test to check for colon cancer. Colon Cancer Awareness Month launches today, and Dr. Jordan Green, Regional Colorectal Screening and GI Endoscopy Lead for Ontario Health — Cancer Care Ontario at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, urges people in our region to get screened for colon cancer by completing a simple, take-home kit.
The fecal immunochemical test (FIT) is a safe and easy-to-complete cancer screening test that checks a person’s stool (poop) for tiny drops of blood, which can be an early sign of colon cancer. If you are ages 50-74 and have no first-degree family history of colon cancer, you should complete a FIT every two years. The FIT is unique when compared to other medical tests. There is no appointment needed to complete the test, since you do this at home. It only takes a few minutes to complete and requires little preparation, so it is easy to fit into your busy schedule.
“The FIT is the best way for average risk people to screen for colon cancer. I strongly encourage people to get a FIT — it is easy, can be done at home, and could save their life,” says Dr. Green. “Many of the FIT positive patients that come for follow up testing end up having large polyps – abnormal growths that form on the lining of the colon. We are able to remove these using an endoscope and actually prevent cancer from forming. A simple test like the FIT can literally save your life.”
FIT is simple and convenient, yet our region has a low number of people screening. The low numbers is a call to action for health care providers to make sure all eligible adults are aware of FIT and have access to screening.
“When colon cancer is detected early, the chance of survival is 90 per cent, which is outstanding compared to many other cancers,” Dr. Green shares. “However, in our region, we have one of the highest rates of “overdue for screening” in the province, at almost 50 per cent. This means half of the people in our region who are eligible have not been screened for colon cancer within the two-year guideline.”
There are many outlets for eligible people to receive a FIT kit, including your health care provider, the Screen for Life Coach (807-684-7777), and Health811 (1-866-828-9213).
If interested in finding out your personal risk for developing colon cancer, as well as five other types of cancers, visit www.MyCancerIQ.ca. This simple, online self-assessment tool includes a personalized action plan for all individuals that can be shared with family and health care providers.
