Grant enables Trinity Village to purchase palliative-care equipment
Supplies will also be used at 2 off-site locations in area hospitals
Thursday July 21, 2011 -- Deb Bartlett
Trinity Village Care Centre in Kitchener will be using an $8,000 grant from the Kitchener and Waterloo Community Foundation to purchase palliative-care equipment.

Debbie Buhrow, communications and grants co-ordinator for Lutheran Homes Kitchener-Waterloo, says the grant money will purchase air mattress overlays, sleep chairs and bedside tables.

She calls the donation “significant” and adds that Trinity Village would not have been able to buy the equipment without the grant.

The equipment will be used at the Trinity Village Care Centre, as well as at its interim bed program at the Grand River Hospital Freeport location and Cambridge Memorial Hospital.

Buhrow calls the off-site locations “mini long-term care” that are located within the hospitals, while a patient awaits a bed in a long-term care home.

Trinity Village’s director of resident care Mary Raithby heard about the air mattress overlays at a supplier’s education day, and immediately saw the benefits of the product in palliative care. The air mattress overlays are a one-use only, 30-day product that helps increase comfort for the patient. The grant will purchase 10 of these overlays.

Raithby says the overlays help relieve pressure, and the nylon cover wicks away moisture, helping to relieve sweat pockets and rashes.

Also, the overlays are motorized, which make turning a resident smoother. It’s painful to move someone who is dying, says Raithby; using the overlay is less disruptive for nurses who come in at half hour intervals.

She also believes that family members will appreciate a new product that will help reduce movement and, therefore, pain.

The sleep chairs are for family members staying with the patient. Buhrow says there are rooms available for family members, but they want to stay near their loved one; not in another room. The sleep chair folds out flat like a bed.

The bedside tables are a cart that has a CD player, books, a blanket and other small comforts. The new tables are nicer and homey, and “don’t look so clinical,” says Buhrow.

She expects the new equipment will help staff feel good about providing better care and comfort to people receiving palliative care.

The Kitchener and Waterloo Community Foundation has provided grant money to Trinity Village before with the domiciliary hostel program, which saw furniture purchased for low-income seniors moving into the retirement home on the same site, says Buhrow.

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