The 100 Mile District General Hospital has been recognized for its efforts in restoring patients’ mobility.
On June 24, Interior Health’s mobility project, Back to Basics, that is based out of 100 Mile House was awarded the Award for Merit in the Dianna Mah-Jones Award of Excellence In Person-Centered Care. The project was lead by 100 Mile Hospital’s former site manager, Natalie Kulyk, who is now the health services manager for the Cariboo-Chilcotin and patient care coordinator, Teressa Allwood.
“We decided to do a mobility project looking at a bunch of other initiatives that were coming down from the ministry and the health authorities that needed to be implemented,” said Kulyk. “It tied in very nicely to look at improving people’s mobility. So, recognizing that obviously at the onset of it, we felt like it would improve people’s quality of life and ability to get them back into their homes if we could get them up and moving, as well as for our staff to be a bit safer.”
Kulyk said there were barriers around staff not feeling confident in their skill set around mobilizing people who might have been a bit frail or weaker than other patients.
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“We did some education with the staff to bring up their skill set so they had the confidence and knowledge to properly asses people and feel more confident in dealing with some of the more challenging patients,” said Kulyk. “Our goal was that we wanted every patient, regardless of what they were here for, to be mobilized a minimum of three times a day.”
In the beginning, staff members would pick a new patient every day and come up with a mobility plan specifically tailored to the patient. Eventually, this grew and every patient had a plan and when new patients came in, a plan would be made for them.
“We wanted to let every patient know that we were a mobility hospital and that this is going to be a part of their care, the importance of it and get them on board of understanding the benefits for them,” said Kulyk. “Of course, there were a few hurdles but everyone has been great about doing their best to overcome those as they came up and looking for solutions around things. I would say around six weeks, we had all of the staff with a bit of extra education that we wanted to give them, we had a mobility plan for all of our patients and we were going full-force at that point.”
Through combined efforts, the team has been able to see positive results. Mobilization is apart of the daily routine and patients who might have previously been restrained are now able to walk on their own or with some assistance.
“We could see a difference in their patients but we also wanted to measure this with some harder data,” said Kulyk. “We looked at our occupancy level and our length of stay because those are some of the things we measure on an on-going basis. We were able to significantly decrease a lot of our statistical data. Our data has been quite telling and one of the things we looked at was our admission to long-term care and there was a significant decrease.”
The program has been up and running for about two years. Kulyk said it is quite unique to 100 Mile. Since its success, the program has caught attention across the region and is being taught to care teams in other hospitals.
“I am very grateful for our community and the staff that work here,” said Kulyk. “This is definitely a testament to the team and their commitment to the patients.”
