{"id":4834,"date":"2022-01-14T08:47:07","date_gmt":"2022-01-14T12:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=4834"},"modified":"2022-01-14T08:47:07","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T12:47:07","slug":"staff-work-to-keep-spirits-up-as-omicron-closes-queens-manor-to-visitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2022\/01\/14\/staff-work-to-keep-spirits-up-as-omicron-closes-queens-manor-to-visitors\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff work to keep spirits up as omicron closes Queens Manor to visitors"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Entrance

Queens Manor, Liverpool. Photo Ed Halverson<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

As the omicron variant runs rampant across Nova Scotia, keeping up morale for staff and residents at Queens Manor has become a full-time job.<\/p>\n

The long-term care home in Liverpool was declared an outbreak facility after a staff member tested positive December 29 and the first resident followed on January 2.<\/p>\n

Executive Director Andrew MacVicar says omicron is present throughout the community and his focus is to eliminate the stigma associated with a positive test among the staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s possible that you could do everything right, which our staff are doing, and be, \u201cthe one\u201d to bring it into the building when in reality, there will never be a \u201cone\u201d person who brings it into the building, in all likelihood, with the volume of viral activity that\u2019s out there,\u201d said MacVicar.<\/p>\n

Long-term care homes were struggling to hire enough workers before the pandemic hit and MacVicar says the most recent outbreak has only made a tough situation worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re starting with sometimes bare-bones staffing, and you are removing a significant number of people with symptoms that would not have prevented them from working in the past, it significantly impacts your ability to fully staff your facility,\u201d said MacVicar.<\/p>\n

He says despite dealing with several staff off work because they have either tested positive or been a close contact of someone with a positive test, Queens Manor is still providing a high-level of care to their residents.<\/p>\n

But backfilling those positions to care for residents means there is no staff available to train and monitor visitors coming to the facility.<\/p>\n

Which is why Queens Manor is currently closed to all visitors except for residents undergoing end of life care.<\/p>\n

MacVicar says decreased staff numbers means not even designated caregivers are permitted until the facility completes a two-week circuit breaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are putting our plan in place to reintroduce designated caregivers as soon as we can because they are an integral part of providing care here.\u201d<\/p>\n

MacVicar says Queens Manor is turning a corner as the first people to test positive return.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we have residents come off isolation from being positive and staff returning to work from being positive I think it\u2019s a very important step towards realizing that we\u2019re going to be okay and we can live with COVID-19, however that is defined in the future.”<\/p>\n

E-mail:\u00a0edhalversonnews@gmail.com<\/a><\/strong>
\nTwitter: @edwardhalverson<\/strong><\/p>\n

To listen to the broadcast of this story, press play below.<\/em><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Queens-Manor-Jan-13-22_mixdown.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the omicron variant runs rampant across Nova Scotia, keeping up morale for staff and residents at Queens Manor has become a full-time job. The long-term care home in Liverpool was declared an outbreak facility after a staff member tested positive December 29 and the first resident followed on January 2. Executive Director Andrew MacVicar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[494,347,503,348,509],"class_list":["post-4834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-news","category-news-posts","tag-andrew-macvicar","tag-long-term-care","tag-omicron-variant","tag-queens-manor","tag-staffing-shortage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4836,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834\/revisions\/4836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}