Hospice Society begins public focus groups

By Brady Grove, Times Reporter

Residents braved the cold weather to attend the Wheatland and Area Hospice Society’s (WAHS) first of six open house focus groups at the Gleichen Community Centre on Jan. 11.
The organization has partnered with the University of Calgary’s (U of C) Cumming School of Medicine and Alberta Health Services (AHS) to put on the public consultation event.
“We want to hear what members of communities in Wheatland County want to say about palliative and end of life care,” said Dr. Joni McNeely, president of the WAHS board of directors. “It is our hope that through listening to what you have to say, we can enhance community supports for patients and families who are affected by life limiting illnesses.”
Just under 30 people attended the free event and were divided into groups. In each group, a student from the U of C would ask residents a series of questions about end of life care, and services and issues surrounding it such as managing caregiver burn out and travel.
Dr. Martin LaBrie is a specialist in palliative care for over 30 years and is now with the U of C and AHS, and has run these focus groups in other communities with hospice societies such as Airdrie and Canmore. Part of the philosophy brought by LaBrie and his team is to help build a culture of communities helping themselves and eliminating travel for patients and family members.
“We can manage the medical and nursing needs to a certain extent,” said LaBrie. “But what we haven’t been able to do very well over the last 30 years is to make sure communities have the capacity to take care of each other.”
Gleichen resident Ken Sauve attended the event to learn more about what the WAHS is doing. His big concern was learning where the WAHS was at on a new building which was big part of his group’s discussion.
“One of the main ones (discussion points) was to get it out of the hospital setting and into a permanent facility,” said Sauve. “We don’t want to have to go to the city or out of the community for those kinds of facilities.”
According to McNeely, the WAHS is still gathering information and hasn’t decided on what to do about a permanent facility at this time. Sauve has seen friends and family go through both hospital care and hospice care.
“That hospital setting … it’d be bad enough if they had their own room, but we’ve had ones where other people are in different beds in the same room,” said Sauve. “That’s just not fair for everybody.”
The Rockyford Community Centre will host a focus group on Jan. 16 at 7 p.m. and the Hussar Seniors Centre gets their chance on Jan. 24 at 2 p.m. The Hope Covenant Church in Strathmore will have two chances for the public to attend, on Jan. 31 at 2 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. The remaining time slots will be in Standard Seniors Centre on Feb. 8 at 7:30 p.m. and Carseland Community Hall on Feb. 21 at 7 p.m.