Powell River’s nearly 200 residents of long-term care facilities and their families will be surveyed about their quality of life in Evergreen Extended Care and Willingdon Creek Village.
According to Emily Jurek, regional engagement lead with the BC Ministry of Health’s office of patient-centred measurement, all 29,000-plus residents in BC’s publicly funded long-term care homes will be surveyed about their quality of life.
“The goal is to make improvements for them, both locally and provincially,” said Jurek. “Volunteers will get to visit the residents, see what it’s like in long-term care, and conduct structured interviews with them.”
Jurek said in addition to polling the residents, surveys will be sent to family members to get a fuller perspective.
She said BC seniors advocate Isobel Mackenzie, after her appointment in 2014, had a big vision for a province-wide survey of residents in long-term care, about their experiences living in those facilities.
“That was done in 2016 to 2017 for the first time, and at that time, there were nearly 27,000 seniors in the province living in long-term care,” said Jurek. “As a result of that survey, there were a number of recommendations made. [Mackenzie] publicly released the results in 2017.
“Some of those recommendations included things like increasing staffing levels, which was a huge issue that we are still seeing in long-term care. Three years later, they rechecked across all five health authorities, and there was an eight per cent increase in direct care staffing as a result of the survey. There’s definitely some progress being made.”
Jurek said there was a commitment made to conduct another survey later, in five years’ time, to see how matters are proceeding. She said this year, the survey is being conducted again, province-wide, involving all seniors living in publicly funded long-term care.
“We are approaching every one of those seniors and giving them the opportunity to share their experiences and to participate in a structured interview,” said Jurek. “All those interviews are being conducted by volunteers, trained in every region of the province.”
Jurek said surveying has begun in some parts of the province, but not in Powell River. She said the survey’s organizers are looking for volunteers here.
“I don’t believe we have many who have stepped forward yet in Powell River,” said Jurek. “We’d love to have a team of 10 or 15 individuals who are able to give of their time over the next couple of months. We hope to have the surveys done by the end of April.”
Anyone interested in volunteering can apply online by visiting surveybcseniors.org/volunteer.
“We know there will be residents who are not able to participate but we want to give everyone the opportunity,” said Jurek. “If they are not able to participate or do not want to, that is fine.”
Jurek said in 2016, there was about a 43 per cent response rate, which is “surprisingly high, given the population we are working with.”
“It was a very encouraging result so that is what we are aiming for this time around,” added Jurek.
She attributes the great result to volunteers who helped carry out the surveys last time around.
Once the results of the current survey have been compiled, the results will be compared to the first survey that was carried out.
“That is one of the things we are looking forward to is being able to compare those results,” said Jurek. “We anticipate the seniors advocate to be releasing the results of the current survey sometime in the fall.”
