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Courtesy Jessica Wyatt
Lakehead University students in the “Creative Community Engagements in Music” course became part of a five-year research project led by Dr. Mary Lou Kelley to enhance the lives of residents of long-term care facilities.
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Courtesy Lakehead University
Dr. Mary Lou Kelley, social work professor and researcher at Lakehead University.
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Courtesy Lakehead University
Mary Lou Kelley is a professor at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. The music department has aided in her research.
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Courtesy Lakehead University
Mary Lou Kelley joins in a music activity with residents in Bethammi Nursing Home in Thunder Bay as part of her five-year research project to improve palliative and hospice care options for long-term nursing care facilities.
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Courtesy Lakehead University
University music students aided in the study.
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Courtesy Jessica Wyatt
Lakehead University students in the “Creative Community Engagements in Music” course became part of a five-year research project led by Dr. Mary Lou Kelley to enhance the lives of residents of long-term care facilities.
Death does not disquiet Dr. Mary Lou Kelley, but she is disturbed by knowing that many people – especially the elderly with chronic terminal illnesses – spend their last days, weeks or even years far from friends and family and in conditions that do not enhance – or address – the ending of their lives.
“One hundred percent of people die,” says Mary Lou, “so it’s not an issue that only a few people are concerned with.”
Mary Lou, social work professor and researcher at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, is passionate to find ways to provide “comfort, quality and dignity” to the end-of-life experience in remote communities and in long-term care facilities.
Her work has taken her to small rural towns and to remote First Nations communities. In Thunder Bay, she enlisted the help of Lakehead’s Music Department to aid in her work in local nursing homes.
The cornerstone of Mary Lou’s work is palliative (PAL-lee-uh-tiv) care, which focuses on those with serious and chronic illnesses to relieve pain, symptoms and stress. Unlike medical care geared toward curing a disease, palliative care considers the physical, spiritual and emotional well-being of a person who is dying or dealing with a long-term chronic condition.
In short, it aims to help them feel more comfortable.
Palliative care has grown in urban areas with access to a broad range of medical and health professionals. But rural areas – like most of our region – do not attract experts in this field. Communities with small populations may need palliative care only every few years, when a resident faces a terminal illness or as a community elder grows more infirmed.
Unfortunately, when the need for such care does arise for residents in a remote community, they often must be sent to the city. That’s where Mary Lou’s research comes in. Mary Lou’s work through Lakehead’s Centre for Education and Research on Aging and Health is finding ways to bring palliative care options to areas without urban resources. Her research is creating local systems that enable elders or others with chronic and terminal illnesses to stay where they are rather than being transplanted to cities far away.
“There aren’t very many (researchers) working in these populations that I’m working in,” she says. “Most of the research that’s being done has been more hospital-based, more cancer-based and more urban-based.”
A key to bringing palliative care to a rural community is assessing what resources are available there.
Each community might have different professional and volunteer options, such as a family-practice doctor or nurse practitioner, perhaps a social worker and then family members or neighbors with skills.
Clergy members or First Nation elders often become part of the resource team.
Social and cultural traditions also are considered, Mary Lou says.
Once such a resource team has been identified, additional education along with long-distance connections to urban-based experts can fill in the gaps.
“It’s really doing a ‘capacity development’ approach with the people who are already there, doing the jobs and are really on the frontline,” she says. “In rural and First Nations communities, for example, they’re much, much more focused on the importance of the family and the volunteers participating in the care. … I think what people need is the same, but how you can go about supporting and resourcing what they need is different.”
Not all of her work has been in remote communities. She is exploring how palliative care can be applied to residents of long-term nursing care facilities, many of whom are spending the end of their lives there.
In one project, she brought Lakehead University music students to nursing homes to explore the value of music on the quality of life for residents. Recently 11 students and two instructors – Dr. Dean Jobin-Bevans and professor Lise Vaugeois – joined the staff at St. Joseph’s Care Group at Bethammi Nursing Home and Hogarth Riverview Manor to offer music activities as part of Mary Lou’s five-year research study.
“Research has demonstrated the benefits of music to older people who have chronic illness and dementia,” Dean says.
As with the rural programs, the goal was to create a “resource toolkit” – in this case musical activities – to use in nursing homes.
And as in the rural projects, the Thunder Bay program gave non-professionals a chance to be part of the resource team.
“Our students are learning about the aging process and also contributing to the community,” Lise says of the project.
Many of the students had never worked with older people, and the project is meant to introduce them to ways their music benefits others and perhaps to a career in this type of service. Some students were amazed by the effect their music could have.
“One day I came here and played some clarinet, some George Gershwin tunes, and (the residents) loved it,” first-year music student Jessica Nunes told writer Jodi Lundmark in a story for tbnewswatch. Jessica, who plans a career in music therapy, noted that as soon as the students walk in the door, the residents are all smiles.
That upbeat interaction is what Mary Lou hoped to achieve – for the students and residents.
Palliative care goes beyond good management of pain and other symptoms of illness, she says. “It strives to meet the psychological, social and spiritual care needs of people. Music can enrich peoples’ social and spiritual lives on a daily basis.”
Mary Lou’s research is making a difference not just in northwestern Ontario but nationally and beyond.
The Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association called Mary Lou “unwavering in quest to advance quality palliative care in rural Canada and among First Nations communities” when it gave her its Award of Excellence 2011. “Dr. Kelley’s passionate contribution to quality end-of-life care, be it advocacy or knowledge translation, is making a difference at the bedside of dying Canadians,” the CHPCA reported in honoring her. “She works tirelessly to improve end-of-life care across diverse settings and populations.”
This summer the city of Thunder Bay also honored her, giving Mary Lou its “Citizens of Exceptional Achievement Award.”
Ultimately Mary Lou hopes her research brings the best possible experience for everyone, regardless of location, in the last phase of life.
“People, if they choose to die at home, they can die at home – whether their home is a rural community, a First Nation or a long-term care home. And not just to die there, but to have comfort and dignity and to be cared for by people who are well-informed.”