Osteoporosis education sparks resident interest
Wednesday September 12, 2007 -- Jason Thompson
Diane Percival says educating the residents at Hillcrest Village long-term care home in Midland about osteoporosis has gotten many of them actively trying to prevent it.

Percival, the life enrichment co-ordinator at Hillcrest, along with Diana Segalin, the assistant activities director at Hillcrest Village, attended a workshop in Barrie about a year ago, talking about the importance of physical activity, proper diet and other means of preventing the occurrence of osteoporosis.

“We were the only ones from up around here that had come. We were concerned because it was so interesting and still there were hardly any people going to it,” Percival says.

It was then that Percival and Segalin decided to share what they’d learnt themselves and organized a learning session for staff at Hillcrest as well as other long-term care and retirement homes in the area.

Percival says the resident council at Hillcrest also expressed an interest in holding an osteoporosis learning session geared towards residents and Monica Menecola, the area manager for the Ontario osteoporosis strategy in the North Simcoe Muskoka Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), was invited to speak with the 30 interested residents who showed up.

Menecola says 50 per cent of people who break their hips end up in long-term care, stressing the importance for seniors to be aware of their bone health because many people don’t know they have osteoporosis until they suffer a fracture or a break.

According to Percival, there were a lot of questions about osteoporosis from the residents.

“I was surprised how interested they were,” she says. “They also now want to get somebody to come in for arthritis.”

The learning session the residents had with Menecola has gotten many residents interested in physical exercise, Percival says.

“Get them motivated so they’re not just sitting in their rooms by themselves,” she says, adding the more residents are informed of medical issues such as osteoporosis, the more they will do to prevent them.

Percival says the staff at Hillcrest are always looking for ways to get residents exercising.

“It’s not how much they do,” she says. “It’s just getting them to participate, keeping their minds alert and aware.”

Menecola says there are some provincial protocols being developed around osteoporosis geared towards long-term care.

The work Percival has done around osteoporosis education will make it easier to implement the protocols at Hillcrest when the time comes, says Menecola.