NACC Scottish Region, News Letter Article Nov 2012 Thistle Healthcare

Thistle Healthcare is a family run business with over 20 years experience of providing healthcare services throughout west central Scotland. This has been mainly through the provision of care homes for the frail elderly and younger adults with special needs. Each facility is expertly designed and constructed to provide state of the art accommodation and nursing care whilst being ideally situated for excellent access to local amenities and transport networks. The foundation of our success will always be our Values. Values are the overriding beliefs in any home. They give the service users and staff a shared sense of direction. They give shape to what is important in the home, and how things should be done. They help create a sense of identity and of being different. Our nursing staff are carefully selected to promote and maintain individual care of the highest standard. They provide quality compassionate nursing care tailored to the individual cultural and religious needs of each resident in a relaxed and homely atmosphere whilst at the same time enabling residents to maximise their social, physical and psychological potential.

A Year in the Life of Thistle Healthcare

The Annual Scottish Care Conference and Scottish Care Awards on 23rd November marked the conclusion of a very interesting and successful year for Thistle Healthcare. We have had a real drive towards equipping our staff with the skills they need to meet the ever increasing challenge of providing high quality care within the confines of everdecreasing funding. In order to achieve this we have had to be creative and innovative and this is what we have done. We launched a Training Marathon in September 2011, covering 13 key topics in 26 weeks. It was vital to recruit the right people to drive this training forward in our 11 Nursing Homes and the qualities we looked for in our training facilitators included passion for learning, a can do attitude, incredible organisational skills, willingness and a basic knowledge of the subjects covered. We recruited an initial 20 Facilitators and they attended a short course with our Training Manager on the skills they would need and returned once a fortnight for the next 26 weeks to introduce each new topic. Eating Well Matters training was introduced in May 2012 based around the Caroline Walker Trust publication Why Eating Well Maters for Older People and Older People with Dementia and was designed to make people think. As part of the training each staff member was asked to complete the following activities: Identify a resident at risk of poor nutrition and: - List the risk factors you have identified. - Describe what steps have already been taken to minimise this persons risk of poor nutrition. - Describe anything else that you think could be put into place to help to further minimise this risk. - Summarise what changes you could make to his or her diet. Think of a resident you know who has a small appetite and bearing in mind the little and often principle, give three suggestions of how you could improve their nutritional intake.

Think of a resident you know who has constipation. Describe how you could go about alleviating this problem through diet. Think of a resident you know who has cardio-vascular disease and consider their normal diet. Describe how changes to his or her diet could help protect against further disease. List 10 ways you can encourage residents to increase their fluid intake (particularly water). List five signs and symptoms of a swallowing problem. Describe what action you should you take if you identify any symptoms of a swallowing problem emerging. Identify 10 problems with eating and drinking caused by dementia and list 10 ways you can support residents with dementia to overcome these problems and eat well.

This had the effect of getting all grades of staff involved in improving the eating and drinking habits of our residents and has led to a greater awareness of the importance of intervening early if a problem is emerging. In November 2011, we set up a Menu Planning Group, the aims of which were, within 6 months, to: Provide a nutritionally balanced menu programme incorporating choice whilst maintaining budgetary control. To review the fundamental principles of menu planning with specific consideration to the provision of foods and fluids to older residents in Care Homes. Risk assess each of the eleven Care Homes to ensure the nutritional needs of the service users are met and measured. Benchmark the menus with menu planning principles and Best Practice Guidance and evaluate the menus in terms of whether they meet dietary requirements, incorporating modification.

At the end of the project we produced a Snack Recipes Book for each of our chefs, providing an array of recipes from our chefs, staff, residents and families and giving advice on suitable snacks for various types of diet, including texture modified. Recipes continue to be submitted and new pages are issued on a regular basis. In June we issued the Hydration Toolkit to coincide with Dehydration in Older people Awareness Week. Also in June, to continue the theme of Texture Modified Diets, all our chefs, assistant chefs and Home Managers attended training involving a discussion of the nutritional value of food as well as a practical demonstration of how to present attractive, appetising, nutritionally robust meals for our residents who need texture modified food.

Onto August and to our own Thistle Healthcare Awards. The Chef Finalists are photographed with Eileen Welch, Director of Operations. Thistle Healthcare will be entering a Chef to compete in the NACC Care Cook Competition 2013.

In September our Training Manager attended the Training and Development Forum in Blackpool and came back buzzing with ideas! On 14th November, we issued a new Training Workbook on Diabetes, to coincide with World Diabetes Day. We are about to issue a Training Pack on Texture Modified Diets for all grades of staff. To get back to the Scottish Care Conference and Awards Margaret Clarke, Chair of the Scottish Branch of NACC was our esteemed guest and our Training Manager gave a presentation about the Training Marathon, also getting a plug in for NACC! We were finalists in three of the 13 award categories Care Newcomer, Ancillary and Support Staff and Innovation, Partnership and Development. We won the Ancillary and Support Staff Award. Whats ahead? Well, we are looking forward to taking part in Nutrition Day on 20th March 2013 and will have at least one Nutrition Advocate in each of our Care Homes, we hope at least one of our chefs will take part in the Care Cook-off in 2013, nominate some of our amazing people for the NACC National Awards and we hope to be finalists in the Nutrition and Eating Well award at the 2013 Scottish Care Awards - feel sure our continuing work with NACC will help us to achieve this. Kate Boyce, Training Manager, on behalf of Thistle Healthcare. For further information please go to http://www.thistlehealthcare.co.uk