Eager to Volunteer at 90

Mrs. Mary Margaret Sims turned 90 years old on Saturday, March 26th and is a long-time volunteer in her community. In addition to volunteering for Meals on Wheels, she is also a volunteer at the local cancer society thrift shop. According to Mrs. Sims, “Serving others gives us self-satisfaction…It makes me feel good.” Click here to read the full story.

“The Difference Between Care & Caring”

The above video – “The Difference Between Care and Caring” recently won a number of local and national awards, including Best in Show at Edmonton’s ACE Awards.

What an incredible night for the Royal Alexandra Hospital,” Andrew Otway, president and CEO of the Royal Alexandra Hospital Foundation, said. “This was a video that really came together so beautifully and effectively because of the staff and leadership at the Royal Alex. We are so immensely proud of this hospital, the people who work here, and the difference they make each day.”

Click here to read more about the video and the family involved.

We Know the Senior Population, Right?

When one hears the word seniors, oft time images arise in one’s mind of someone who is frail, bent over due to osteoporosis, listless and lethargic, confused and lacking in mobility. Not surprisingly, such assumptions and stereotypes affect how we see and treat seniors.

Recognizing this, Michelle Gibson, a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, challenges her first-year medical students’ assumptions of seniors and geriatric medicine through the use of You Tube videos. According to Gibson, “All the videos are of “regular” seniors- not famous folk, by design. I will only show videos where seniors are treated like adults, with respect. (This means there are many news interviews I won’t use, sadly, because they often have a patronizing ‘yes dear’ tone to them that I can’t stand.)”

Below is one of the video Gibson uses in her class.

Click here to read Gibson’s article and watch some more of her videos.