Resources/Programs
The PATH Clinic: help for chronically ill seniors.
Do you work with older, chronically ill patients? The Palliative and Therapeutic Harmonization Clinic would like you to know that they are here to help.
Older patients with chronic illness, their family/friends, and their health care providers face many challenging issues as they plan for the road ahead of them. They may have questions about how to get the most out of life, how to make health care decisions that reflect their values, how to manage symptoms, and what to expect.
Drs. Laurie Mallery and. Paige Moorhouse, both of the Division of Geriatric Medicine at Dalhousie University, have developed the PATH (Palliative and Therapeutic Harmonization) clinic to help people find answers to these questions.
Located in the Geriatric Ambulatory Clinic, on the first floor of the Camp Hill Veterans’ Hospital, the PATH clinic is aimed at older patients with advanced chronic disease who want to learn more about health care planning, or are interested in integrating a palliative approach into their existing care plan.
“There are times when a person is frail and nearing the end of life that medical treatments meant to improve health can actually create new problems or prolong dying,” says Dr. Moorhouse.
The PATH process involves three clinic visits, which include:
- a comprehensive physical, psychological and social assessment,
- an exchange of expectations and information between the patient, family and health care providers,
- learning new skills, to help the patient and their family with future health decisions
The doctors, nurses, and other health professionals in the PATH clinic have specialized training and many years of experience working with frail older adults and their families. They can help guide you through the process of making health care decisions that will protect your best interests and quality of life.
For more information :
Phone: (902) 473-8603
Fax: (902) 473-7133
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Services for Veterans
Many Canadian Forces Veterans are unaware of the services and benefits available to them. One of the most important branches of the Royal Canadian Legion is the Service Bureau which exists “to serve Still Serving CF members Veterans, RCMP Members and dependants while representing your interests in any dealings with Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) and the Veterans Review and Appeal Board (VRAB) in claiming disability benefits under the Pension Act or the New Veterans Charter.”
Any Veteran who needs assistance with any of the above, or or who is unaware of services and benefits available to them, can contact their local service officer. A full list of Service Officers can be found here.
Enabling Accessibility Fund now accepting applications
The Government of Canada is now accepting applications to its Enabling Accessibility Fund:
The Enabling Accessibility Fund (EAF) supports community-based projects across Canada that improve accessibility, remove barriers, and enable Canadians with disabilities to participate in and contribute to their communities.
The Government of Canada is building on the success of this program for people with disabilities delivered from 2007 to 2010, by providing an additional $45 million over the next three years.
While EAF continues to provide funding for small projects, Budget 2010 expands eligibility for the program to include mid-sized projects. This enables communities to undertake larger retrofit projects and foster partnerships for creating new facilities. Mid-sized project funding is not available at this time.
Organizations may apply for funding only when there is an open call for proposals.
Click here for more information.
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GANS online forum project receives funding from NS Dept of Seniors
GANS is pleased and excited to announce that our application to the Nova Scotia Department of Seniors Positive Aging Fund was successful!
The GANS proposal involves development of an online forum section to this website. We aim to create an online forum that is a discussion place fo
r Seniors in Nova Scotia, and anyone who works with or for them. To accomplish this, we are partnering with the Community Access Program (C@P).
C@P will help us deliver not only a useful and engaging online hub for discussions and information sharing, but will assist us in one of the key components to this: two tiers of learning for Seniors – how to use the forum, and how to teach other seniors to us it as well.
With much of Nova Scotia soon to have access to broadband internet service, we think this online forum can be a great way for Seniors to reach out to each other and create online communities for socializing and helping each other.
The GANS board will meet soon to work out the details of implementing this project – so watch this space!
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Programs for Positive Ageing Guide 2010 now available
The Nova Scotia Department of Seniors has made the 2010 Programs for Positive Ageing Guide available for download a their website.
The guide is a comprehensive publication of everything from useful phone numbers to seniors-serving organizations and events in Nova Scotia. You can get your copy here.
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Nova Scotia Depts. of Seniors & Justice offer grants for safety projects
The Nova Scotia Departments of Seniors and Justice have teamed up to offer grants for programs that enhance safety in communities, promote communications between seniors and police, and encourage more contact between seniors and young people to promote respect and positive relationships between generations
.
From the Department of Seniors website:
“The Senior Safety Grant will contribute to: the enhancement and/or expansion of existing Seniors’ Safety Program’s services; the expansion of Seniors’ Safety Programs to areas not currently served and; professional development for program coordinators. The Senior Safety Grant will provide annual funding up to $20,000 to Seniors’ Safety Programs. The Grant will:
- demonstrate government’s commitment to seniors’ safety;
- strengthen links to government’s senior abuse prevention and crime prevention strategies;
- provide a cost effective approach to crime prevention and community capacity building;
- provide professional development opportunities for Senior Safety Coordinators;
- expand programs into communities where they do not exist and;
- ensure that more Nova Scotians have access to these programs and services.
The overall goal of the Seniors’ Safety Program is to address the safety concerns of seniors by promoting education and awareness about crime prevention, senior abuse and safety and health issues, and by enhancing communication between seniors and police.”
The grants are for a maximum of $20,000 per individual project. Visit the Department of Seniors here, get the details of the grant here or call them toll free at 1-800-670-0065.
You can also view the Department of Justice website here.
Tai Chi – an exercise option for elderly adults with many benefits.
Recent studies from Tufts University have shown that the traditional Chinese martial art Tai Chi, known in western countries for its soft, flowing movements, is not only a good exercise option for older adults and the frail, but can benefit heart health and osteoarthritis. 
A report from the Tufts University Program in Evidence-Based Complimentary and Alternative Medicine reports that “studies suggest that Tai Chi is a safe exercise, even for frail elders, and may be beneficial to various aspects of cardiovascular health. It requires no specialized equipment, is relatively inexpensive and can be taught/learned in a group setting. Tai Chi appears to elicit a cardiovascular response equivalent to that associated with moderate intensity exercise, and as such meets the American College of Sports Medicine, American Heart Association, and Centers for Disease Control recommendations for daily performance of low- to moderate-intensity activities.”
And in the November issue of Arthritis Care & Research, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology, researchers reported “that patients over 65 years of age with knee osteoarthritis (OA) who engage in regular Tai Chi exercise improve physical function and experience less pain. Tai Chi (Chuan) is a traditional style of Chinese martial arts that features slow, rhythmic movements to induce mental relaxation and enhance balance, strength, flexibility, and self-efficacy.”
If you would like to learn more about Tai Chi, or even give it a try, you can check out the website of the International Taoist Tai Chi Society – Atlantic Region. Here you will find information on classes all over Nova Scotia.
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Getting a needle from a haystack: one way to find news for and about seniors.
The internet is vast and the volume of information available to us is simply staggering. In the face of ever-growing resources for news on virtually any topic, how can we effectively filter this to find the news that is of interest to us? The key to surviving the information overload that is the internet is the use of clever tools designed to customize our searches or set parameters for what we are interested in.
One such tool is called Newsmap, which was designed by Marcos Weskamp. It creates a visualization of information from the Google News news aggregator. Google’s aggregator collects news from around the world. Newsmap takes the aggregated news stories and turns them into this:
Wow. I know what you are thinking: “Too much!” And it may be. But let me walk you through this and then show you how we can customize it to collect just the information we want.
The different colours correspond to the different news categories listed across the bottom right. Hover your mouse over any of the stories (on the website of course, not here) and a snippet from the story will pop up. Click your mouse on the story and it will open up in another window, at the website from which the story came. The creator explains the size of the cells:
“Google News automatically groups news stories with similar content and places them based on algorithmic results into clusters. In Newsmap, the size of each cell is determined by the amount of related articles that exist inside each news cluster that the Google News Aggregator presents. In that way users can quickly identify which news stories have been given the most coverage, viewing the map by region, topic or time. Through that process it still accentuates the importance of a given article.”
The above image is all the news from Canada in all news categories.
Now let’s make this find just news from Canada about seniors, in the category of ‘health. We keep ‘Canada’ selected at the top, type in ‘seniors’ in the search bar on the top right, and de-select all the categories at the bottom except for health. ‘ What we get looks like this:
This is a very handy tool for a group like us who run a blog that needs fresh content updated every day or two, but it’s also fun for anyone who would like to try it. We can customize the search to look for a variety of topicssee quickly what topics are hottest in the news right now.
To try this yourself, head over to Newsmap and give it a whirl. Remember, you can’t break it, so just enter something in the search bar and see what happens. Happy hunting!
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Astor trial highlights issue of elder abuse.
The trial of Anthony Marshall, the son of the late socialite and philanthropist Brooke Astor, is wrapping up in New York. While it is not clear yet what the verdict will be, this event has brought elder abuse into the spotlight. the New York Times blog “The New Old Age” notes:
‘Meryl Gordon, author of “Mrs. Astor Regrets,” has been among those watching the courtroom drama unfold. “It has been a fascinating spectacle,” Ms. Gordon said via e-mail. “A graduate seminar in the ravages of Alzheimer’s, a sad tale of mother-son family dysfunction, a window into the world of New York society.” ‘
The Nova Scotia Department of Seniors has some very good information about what elder abuse is and highlights the signs of physical, sexual, social, emotional and financial abuse, as well as neglect, on their site.
The government of Canada also launched an elder abuse awareness campaign this year, and has many excellent resources at their site.
Caregiving up close and from a distance.
Writing in the New York Times blog New Old Age, Anne C Roark talks about the request her father made of her: “…my father told me not to do for them what they had done for their parents: become their caregiver when they were old” and the difficulties of caring for elderly parents, even when it is done from afar.
You can read the full article here and for more information about caregiving resources in Nova Scotia, you can drop by the info centre at Caregivers Nova Scotia. They have handbooks, numbers to call and even a planning guide to help you get started.
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