By Maybelle Hui, OTR/L, PAM, DOR, Mission Hills Post Acute Care, San Diego, CA
I wanted to send some pictures over to show everyone how Mission Hills Post Acute Care has been celebrating! In the last year, we’ve had five “best months ever” for taking care of our long-term residents with our clinical programs.. For our last “best month ever” in October, we decided to share our celebrations with our whole facility. It actually started with one of my therapists suggesting we do some kind of celebration with the CNA staff, as they all work so hard. I wanted to share this celebration with the Nursing staff as well, since we are down to only three Nursing managers holding down the fort at Mission Hills and they are all working well beyond their job duties. One of my other therapists also wanted to include Maintenance and Housekeeping since they also are so integral in keeping our building running. So, with all this, we decided to ask our administrator if we could just make this a facility-wide celebration so everyone could celebrate with us and feel included. And of course, he said yes! 😊
We are so lucky to have this culture of recognition and celebration — one that we’re aware not all departments have — and we wanted to share our successes with our colleagues since they all play a role in the care of our long-term patients. We decided to have a “Boodle Fight,” a practice that originated in the Philippines military, where a big pile of food is served in the middle of a really long table in a mess hall; every hungry soldier eats with their hands, symbolizing camaraderie, brotherhood, and equality in the military. The “fight” in the name refers to the act of grabbing and eating as much as the soldier can before others grab them, otherwise you won’t have any. In retrospect, it is symbolic of what our Rehab department was trying to do with this celebration in the first place!
