Interview with Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place Verve Senior Living management, Amber Fisher

First and foremost, the residents. You can’t beat them. I always tell people I have 150-some grandmas and grandpas. I love that they become our family, that we get to know them on a one-on-one basis, that we become an extension of their family. At least that’s how we feel.

I love the environment that we get to work in. I love that it’s an easygoing, family environment. I get to work with really great people who truly care about the residents and care about their job at Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place.

To be completely honest, I really like the computer stuff of my job. I love the statistics

I’ve been working at Dr. Hemstock kind of on and off for 12 years. I’ve had a couple of babies in between, so I had some breaks in there. When I first started working, I had a grandma who lived at the Hemstock, and I came to visit her one day. I had recently moved home from university, and she said, “Well, they’re hiring. Why don’t you see if you can get a job?”

I absolutely fell in love with being at Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place, being with the residents, and bonus, I got to be with her a lot more. Then I eventually had my other grandma move in. So I had the absolute best of both worlds. It was great because I got lunch cooked for me every day. 

I’ve always had a heart for seniors, but just having that personal touch, just really knowing that I know how families feel when they move their loved ones in here because I had a family member live here. I still think of them as my family. It’s such a really positive environment for our seniors to be in.

I can’t personally speak to a lot of the other residences in town. Lloydminster is a smaller community, so we definitely don’t have a ton of other options. I would say that we’re a little bit unique in the way that we operate, in the style of our building, as compared to other places in Lloydminster. 

We have a lot of long-term care in Lloydminster, but not necessarily a lot of assisted living or independent living. The unique thing about us is that you have that 24-hour security. There’s somebody in our building 24 hours a day. That makes Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place stand out the most.

We can offer our residents, if you need help at two in the morning, somebody’s here for you. Within 30 seconds, a minute, as long as it takes to walk down the hallway. So I would say that would be what distinguishes us for sure.

We have a really great team, specifically our life enrichment team. They are top-notch to me. They go absolutely above and beyond for our residents.

They know every resident on an individual basis, know their likes and their dislikes, and what they need. Just what’s that little extra you need to make your day special. 

There's everything and anything you can think of to do here. We wouldn’t be a seniors’ home without Bingo, so that's always a popular program.

They’re always coming up with different ideas for us. We’ve had corn roasts, we’ve had antique car shows, we’ve had bingo, cards, all those kind of traditional things. We had a ’50s diner celebration happy hour one day, and everybody dressed up. They’re always just coming up with really unique ways to engage our residents.

We do things like Cruise Week, where we get a passport, and we go around to the different Caribbean countries, and every day has different food associated with it and dress code. It’s a lot of really fun things to make it so that they’re engaged and we’re able to kind of just live life with them at Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place.

All the food is good. I would say, honestly, the desserts probably, specifically the homemade baking. Our chefs are fantastic cooks and they’re fantastic bakers.

It’s really hard to not gain weight around Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place, to be completely honest.

We definitely work with our corporate menu, so it comes down from our head office, and it’s approved by a dietitian. We want to make sure that we’re feeding our residents all four food groups, with some treats every now and then.

We do have a thing called Resident’s Choice, so residents can submit a request, whether it’s pierogies and sausage or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding or whatever they want it to be. We give them that option once a week: a Resident’s Choice meal. They get to have some input with that.

Of course, if there was something on the menu that there was a lot of feedback of, “Hey, we really don’t like this,” we’re going to do our best to accommodate, and we want them to enjoy their food for sure.

The food at Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place is almost always very well received. Our residents very much enjoy the meals, and I can personally say they are very good. 

We want them to feel like it’s their home because it’s going to be their new home. We want to do personal touches, like if they came from a farming background, how do we make you feel comfortable within your suite? We do a "wow welcome" for them like the simple touch of putting a fresh bouquet of flowers in their room. We want them to feel at home.

We also set them up with a buddy system as well, so somebody to kind of show them the ropes in the beginning, say, "Hey, this is when lunchtime is, why don’t you come down with me?" That’s really helpful too. It’s a fresh start at a different stage of life.

I always tell this, "This is your home. So how do we make you feel comfortable at Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place?"  Engaging in that feedback in the context that this is now your home. We want you to feel comfortable.

One other nice thing is they bring their own furniture, bring their own decor. It’s not going to be their home like it was, but they are going to be surrounded by their stuff, so that makes a huge difference too.

We kind of have two parts to our building. We essentially operate as one, but we do have a more independent side that feels more like a condo type situation. You walk in and it’s like you’re walking into a beautiful condo. It has a full kitchen. You would never know you were in a seniors’ residence.

The assisted living side is still super independent. They just need a few more things helped with like meals or they need some medication assist, just help remembering to take our pills at the right time and things like that.

It’s a really great transitional thing that can happen at Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place. We see a lot of residents move into that independent side knowing, okay, I don’t have to shovel snow anymore, I don’t have to cook all my meals if I don’t want to, and there’s somebody in our building, in my building, looking out for me. 

They can transition over to the assisted living side, and it's an easy transition. You go from that more independence to maybe now needing a little bit more help, we’re a little closer to the dining room, things like that. It’s not losing independence, but just getting those services as we age that we need.

There are actually quite a few services that we can put into place while they’re still living at Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place. Things like med assist, bath assist, laundry assist, extra housekeeping if we needed it, meal reminders if we’re losing track of time, things like that.

If we’re getting on to the next stage, we have a nurse who works full-time, and she is fantastic at advocating for our residents, meeting with home care, saying, "We’re approaching that next stage. How do we make this happen?" She contacts family members. We want them to feel like we’re advocating for them. We care about the next level of care that they’re getting. So she’s really fantastic at making that transition a little bit easier. She knows the ropes and helps families make the decision. 

We do regular check-in with all of our residents. There’s an open line of communication between all staff members and the management team saying, “Hey, I noticed this is happening, we need to address this.” Or “Hey, I noticed we’re not getting our dishes done as often as we did before,” and this is not normal for that person. Because we develop those one-on-one relationships, we know what is normal and what is not normal for our residents. We can tell when something is off.

If we think they need more care, we would have our nurse contact the family member and say, "Hey, we noticed this. We want you to know, or we're concerned, and this is the next steps that we need to take." We definitely open that line of communication with family members too if they have any questions. "Please come and meet with us so that we can make sure we’re doing the absolute best we can to take care of your loved one at Hearthstone Place."

Some of my favorite memories of our residents are every month we do a birthday and anniversary party. We all know we don’t live in the good old days where there used to be community dances and things like that, but for an evening it feels like we almost go back in time, and the residents just like it.

We celebrate them, another year, another anniversary. We have a little dance, we have a band come in, and we serve cake. It’s just a really nice evening for them. The happiness of, "let’s celebrate you" is really cool. That’s one of my favorite things that we do at Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place.

I think we’re going to see technology become a bigger presence in the next five years. Obviously, as baby boomers are moving into that retirement stage and into their more senior age, technology is a part of their lives, so it’s going to become a part of our lives more and more.

Even things like having more programming virtually or different things with technology is going to be where we’re headed. Having apps for things: things like that. So yeah, maybe ordering our supper with an app as opposed to in the dining room. I think that’s going to be the major trend we’re going to see at Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place.

To help make the decision, you need to know first and foremost what you’re most comfortable with, what you’re okay with. Once people come into our building and see what type of an environment that they’re moving into, that does help quite a bit, knowing that it is a family environment and a very high-functioning environment.

I often say, "Let’s make a pro and con list. What are the good things about moving into Dr. Hemstock Retirement Residence and Hearthstone Place? What is the bad in your mind? How do we work with that? Can we fix anything on your con list? Is there anything we can do to help make that transition easier?"

I think just talking it through is key. Lots of older people do have a stigma about moving into a seniors' home. In their defense, when they would have moved their parents or grandparents in, it wasn’t like this. This is a different experience for them. 

Lots of older people do have a stigma about moving into a seniors' home. In their defense, when they would have moved their parents or grandparents in, it wasn’t like this. This is a different experience for them. 

They don’t realize that it’s fun and it’s engaging and all those things. Working through those concerns does help to make that transition easier.

Retirement community living is a relatively new concept in the history of senior living. Knowing that you’re not losing all your independence, you’re not locked into this building, you are still able to live your most independent life that you want to: that's still a new idea for people.

You have as much or as little to do with us as you want at Dr. Hemstock. You come down for your meals, and if that’s all we see of you, that’s okay. We want you to feel what’s comfortable with you, not force you to do anything. 

When you’re searching for that home, my advice would be to go and spend some time there. Don’t just do a five-minute, “Oh yeah, that’s the suite, okay.” No, go have a meal there. Watch how the staff treat the residents who already live there. Do they know their names? Do they engage with them? And not just the person who’s touring you, because anybody can put on an act. 

At Dr. Hemstock, you watch our staff, and they care about our residents. I’ve witnessed that time and time again.

Then I would say go back for another tour and see how they act on that day. Really get to know that environment that you’re in. This is something that you’re going to do for hopefully years, and this is going to be your home. So just really get to know what are their core values, what do they do in some situations. Ask the tough questions.