What’s new at SafeCare BC?

Take a look at the latest news and updates from SafeCareBC.

Popular conference for health care assistants returns

As a conference sponsor, SafeCare BC is inviting health care assistants to attend the third-annual Hearts & Hands Conference held in Victoria and Penticton.

October 3 – Victoria
October 17 – Penticton

Participants will enjoy an agenda filled with celebration and education, breakfast and lunch, and an exhibitor fair. If you’re a health care assistant, resident care assistant, community health worker, or home care worker, this is the conference for you.

Congratulations to Menno Place

SafeCare BC would like to congratulate Abbotsford’s Menno Place for being recognized this week at the BC Health Care Awards with a Merit Award in Workplace Health Innovation.

Menno has refined its practices to encourage safety and a focus on reducing workplace injuries. They are COR (Certificate of Recognition) certified, and some of their other strategies include peer support, violence prevention training, safety orientation, team huddles, and events, such as their Safety Expo.

Menno recently partnered with SafeCare BC to establish a satellite training centre at its site, and is also very active in its participation with SafeCare BC through other ways, including:

Technical Advisory Committee
Front-line Communications Working Group
Provincial Violence Prevention Curriculum Facilitator Training

Peer coaches expand training opportunities

“I see my friends getting hurt!” said Lee Frederick, a licensed practical nurse at Parksville’s Arrowsmith Lodge to SafeCare BC last year. Lee and four of his co-workers took SafeCare BC’s Safe Resident Handling Train-the-Trainer course.

Read Lee’s story here.

Six months later, Lee provided this update:

We have held four safe handling training sessions, with 10 participants per session, all of which were well-received. I feel it’s making an improvement on the floor and staff buy-in has been good.
A happy side effect of the sessions has been a general increase in interest around safety. Our parking lot of ideas in the sessions generally turned into a conversation around safe work procedures as a whole.