Nova West Island / Nova l'ouest de l'île
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Mission Statement
The delivery of high quality, community-based healthcare has been the mandate of the Victorian Order of Nurses/NOVA since 1911. At NOVA West Island, experienced, caring, and dedicated professional & support staff, as well as volunteers work together to improve the quality of life for vulnerable adults, youth and families in our community. We have over 110 years of proven experience in implementing health programs and responding to unmet community needs. The financial support from individuals, foundations, corporations, municipalities, community groups and fundraising activities allows NOVA West Island to bridge gaps in the public healthcare system by offering a variety of programs and services at little or no cost. These include In-home cancer, ALS and palliative nursing care; Volunteer transportation services; Bereavement Support for adults and children; Adult Day Centers for seniors with cognitive impairments; Home Support Services; and Support Groups for ALS and Alzheimer caregivers. Through one or more of our programs, we took care of more than 645 vulnerable people last fiscal year in 16 municipalities in the West Island of Montreal (Baie d'Urfé, Beaconsfield, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Dorval, Ile Bizard, Ile Perrot, Kirkland, Lachine, Pierrefonds, Pincourt, Pointe-Claire, Roxboro, Senneville, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Ste-Geneviève, Terrasse-Vaudreuil) . Our services have an enormous positive impact on caregivers, the public healthcare system and the community at large. We work complementarily with other community groups and healthcare professionals to provide holistic care to our clients and their families. We conduct outreach activities in order to network with, and facilitate referrals from hospitals and healthcare organizations in the greater Montreal area. We refer clients and work very closely in consultation with several community partners to improve the health and the well-being of people in need (For example: West Island Cancer Wellness Center, Volunteer West Island, West Island Citizen advocacy, West Island Community Resource Centre, ABOVAS, Alzheimer Society of Montreal, Alzheimer Group Inc.). Through our healthcare endeavors and community investment, we improve accessibility to care and we promote continuity of services. For NOVA, success is the ability to support the growing number of clients in providing nursing visits for oncology, ALS and palliative care patients and families, rides to appointments, volunteer home support, home health aides, and bereavement support. We pride ourselves in providing timely and easy access to care and services and continuously strive not to subject existing and potential clients to waiting lists. The restructuring of the Quebec healthcare system has resulted in increasing the workload for the NOVA staff in all our programs. Over the years, we have adapted our service offer in order to respond to the reality of our community as not all the needs of palliative care, cancer or ALS patients are being met by the public healthcare system. Our personnel specializes in bridging some of the identified gaps by providing professional nursing services in clients’ homes, support from home health aides, volunteers who visit and others who drive, as well as other complementary services.
About This Cause
Our primary mandate became cancer and palliative care in 1972 with the creation of CLSC’s. We help and support those living with or affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and many different types of malignancies. Specifically, we offer free in-home professional nursing visits which are arranged in collaboration with patients and families to allow for bio-psycho-social assessments, teaching, active listening, symptom management and follow-up. The NOVA team provides support and comfort to patients and their families during this challenging time. We accompany them on this difficult journey of a life threatening illness and end of life issues. For those living with ALS or cancer, or in need of palliative care, our public healthcare system does not consider them as palliative until there is a documented medical prognosis of less than three months of life. At NOVA, we provide in-home care for these patients, families and caregivers when the actual need arises, and not when arbitrary government policy dictates. It is our experience that cancer and ALS patients want the assurance that they can stay home with their loved ones in familiar surroundings, while having the security of knowing they will be able to follow their treatment plan and benefit from professional in-home evaluations. Patients are therefore able to remain in the comfort of their own home for as long as possible. We are also seeing an increase in the need to accompany more clients in home deaths as we have done so for 99 patients in the last year. As the need is increasing, we are evaluating the possibility to expand our palliative care program to offer a more comprehensive and supportive approach to end of life clients and their families. In 2020-2021, our nine nurses (6.3 FTE) took care of 12 ALS clients and 419 palliative or cancer clients (26 to 93 years of age), many of whom benefited from our free transportation service and our volunteer home visits. The NOVA nurses opened 118 new client files for people living with ALS or 38 different types of cancer. Lung, breast and colorectal were again the top three leading diagnoses in our client caseload. The nurses provided 2,092 home nursing visits, 2,127 phone nursing assessments, 8,658 hours of service and on average managed 150 patients at any given time. We are the only not for profit organization that provides FREE professional nursing and bereavement counseling, transportation service to oncology and related appointments, and not-for-profit home health aides in our community. We link underserved individuals to clinical services by supplying free medical and self-care supplies (dressings, nutritional supplements, hygiene care products, lymphedema sleeves, wigs and head covers) and we lend equipment to facilitate home care and adaptation which helps to promote autonomy and self-care. Finally, in order to provide respite to caregivers, we offer volunteer home visitors for companionship, support groups for ALS and Alzheimer caregivers, as well as home health aides. These services have a significant impact on the quality of life and the well-being of seniors and caregivers in our community. Additionally, we operate four Adult Day Centers where cognitively impaired adults (mostly Alzheimer clients) can socialize and be stimulated in a safe, friendly, “club-like” environment while the caregivers enjoy some well-deserved respite time. Our programming has been expanded and adapted virtually. Our Carousel Program is a bereavement program that provides support for children and youth having difficulty coping with a loss or major change. This unique and innovative program offers a “circle of support” to everyone free of charge, the clients get support for as long as they need it with the flexibility to meet in different places and we are the only ones to offer biannual weekend bereavement camps for children in the West Island. Grief counseling is available in the homes, the schools, and our office where clients can be seen. It focuses on respectful listening, discussion, comforting, understanding and creative activities to foster expression of emotions and thoughts, healing and remembering. We understand that our challenge is competing with many other worthy organizations for funds and in our case, the bulk of our budget is for expenses such as professional salaries. But that is who we are and how we differentiate ourselves from others. For example, our nurses have an “old-fashioned” way of providing care by taking the time required to talk and listen to the patients and treating them as people, not “units” of services . They have a direct impact on our clients and their families’ quality of life with countless little things that never have a place in accounting ledger. In addition, we have the professional latitude to provide as many nursing visits and interventions based on our clients’ needs and not ministerial guidelines. The donated funds are transformed into compassionate, professional care and support to vulnerable people in the West Island. Our administrative expenses (estimated at 17%) are kept to a strict minimum as we strongly believe in financial accountability and giving back to the community. As we do not receive any federal or provincial government funding, we are continuously soliciting to fund our widely recognized and appreciated palliative care program and approaching new potential donors at the individual, community and corporate levels as our funding strategy is dynamic and continually renewed. With your financial contribution we can enhance our quality care for the palliative, oncology and ALS population, maintain our oncology transportation program and improve access to our nursing program, as well as our other programs and services. As we experience and foresee the increasing need for our services, we search for like-minded partners to work with us in meeting this important healthcare need. Our services could not exist without the social commitment of our donors and our volunteers. All of our programs are supported by volunteers from the community and from cancer survivors and family members of previous patients. In fact, NOVAWI is a volunteer-driven organization with over 200 active volunteers and there are many volunteering opportunities in all our healthcare programs, as well as in the Thrift Shops for NOVA.