Ethics in long-term care
There are many ethical issues in long-term care, often as a result of family and resident wishes not being aligned. As well, issues involving the cognitive wellness of residents and a corresponding absence of family often initiate ethical discussions. Many OMNI homes are putting ethics committees in place to take a look at the field of ethics to ascertain if there is a consistent approach that can be applied while still respecting the individuality of each person who lives in an OMNI home.

Earlier this year the Canadian Council on Health Services (CCHSA) placed a new emphasis on ethics, beefing up its education training sessions.

Leanne Hadley, administrator and director of care of Streamway Villa in Cobourg, sees this as an opportunity for OMNI to produce a general policy on ethics. She says up until now ethical issues were discussed on a case-by-case basis with no formal policy in place. She says the thing to remember with ethical issues is that they so often need to be decided upon relatively quickly.

There are many conflicts to be dealt with between residents and family members. For example, "a family member may want a resident to be resuscitated in the event of an emergency, whereas the resident may not want that,"says Mary Anne Greco, administrator and director of care of Burnbrae Gardens in Cambellford. "...we often have to act as an advocate for the resident."

In these situations the home has had to contact the Advocacy Centre in Toronto for legal representation of the resident. The service is free for anyone over the age of 65 who is cognitively well.

Mary Anne says OMNI leaders would benefit from a retreat with an ethics consultant, given the number of ethical issues facing long-term care home administrators.

According to Karl Samuelson, what ethics really comes down to is good problem solving. Karl, who is the administrator of Garden Terrace, believes the topic has come up again because so many organizations are not adequately addressing the right issues.

Earlier this year Pam Murphy, director of care at Almonte Country Haven, began working towards getting an ethics committee off the ground. Pam sees ethics as something all long-term care homes deal with on a regular basis and believes an ethics committee is needed in every home.

Pam says employees are keen to see a committee formed, and she too is looking forward to getting it up and running. She has been looking to recruit staff and people with legal backgrounds, pastoral and theorist credentials and social work and nursing components. "It would be good to have a committee to discuss this kind of thing, to be surer of our decisions."