SVMC Launches Patient and Family Advisory Council
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/ Categories: NEWS, 2021

SVMC Launches Patient and Family Advisory Council

BENNINGTON, VT—November 23, 2021—Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC), a part of Southwestern Vermont Health Care (SVHC), is gathering members for a new council made up of patients and their families. The new Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC) aims to provide a forum for dialogue among patients, families, community members, and the health system as a way to ensure that the health system is meeting the needs of the community.

  • The group will be made up of 12 members of the community who have been patients at SVMC or who are a family member of a current or past patient at SVMC.
  • The group will meet every other month for an hour in the evening. Meetings will begin with a light dinner and chance to socialize before the business of the meeting begins.
  • The council will discuss patient safety, the quality of care, and patient comfort in the spirit of continual improvement.

“Our mission is to provide exceptional care and comfort to the people we serve,” said Paula Seaman, MSN, DA, RN, SVMC’s administrative director of Quality, Safety, Value, and Education. “We hope that this new group will bring us closer to what patients and their families are really thinking and feeling about their experience with us and help us ensure that we are fulfilling that mission for every patient during every encounter.”

Additional volunteer opportunities—including relating with patients, joining regional advisory boards, and attending organizational meetings—may be extended to members of the council who are particularly suited for taking on a more expansive role.

Those interested in membership should e-mail theresa.demasi@svhealthcare.org. Once a full contingent of members have been identified, the PFAC will begin meeting, likely in the winter of 2021 – 22. 

About SVHC:
Southwestern Vermont Health Care (SVHC) is a comprehensive, preeminent, healthcare system providing exceptional, convenient, and affordable care to the communities of Bennington and Windham Counties of Vermont, eastern Rensselaer and Washington Counties of New York, and northern Berkshire County in Massachusetts. SVHC includes Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC), Southwestern Vermont Regional Cancer Center, the Centers for Living and Rehabilitation, and the SVHC Foundation. SVMC includes 25 primary and specialty care practices.
 
SVMC has earned several prominent distinctions. Most recently, SVMC received the American Hospital Association’s Rural Healthcare Leadership Award for transformational change in efforts toward healthcare reform and its fifth consecutive designation within the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s (ANCC) Magnet Recognition Program®. It ranked fourth in the nation for healthcare value by the Lown Institute Hospitals Index in 2020 and is one of Vermont’s Best Places to Work. SVMC earned an ‘A’ for hospital safety from the Leapfrog Group for two years in a row. During the pandemic, SVMC and both its skilled nursing facilities, the Centers for Living and Rehabilitation in Bennington, and the Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation at Hoosick Falls, earned perfect scores on a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services evaluation meant to determine the ability to prevent transmission of COVID-19 and other infections.
 
Southwestern Vermont Medical Center provides exceptional care without discriminating on the basis of an individual’s age, race, ethnicity, religion, culture, language, physical or mental disability, socioeconomic status, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression. Language assistance services, free of charge, are available at 1-800-367-9559.

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Home Office How To

Did you know that many sources of chronic pain start in a poorly arranged office? Carpal tunnel, pinched nerves, overuse injuries can often be traced to chairs being positioned improperly or important tools being positioned outside easy reach. While reaching or straining once or twice wouldn't hurt us at all, doing so repeatedly day after day can cause painful and lasting injuries.

As an occupational health physician at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, one of my responsibilities is to help employees of SVMC and other companies who have workplace injuries and recommend the adjustments they should make.

During a spike in work-from-home arrangements, I have heard about friends’ and family members' work-from-home set-ups. Some are working from laptops on their couches. Others are set up at kitchen tables. We know that their cats walk across their keyboards and their kids interrupt. Especially since Governor Scott has just indicated that remote workers will likely be the last to return to the traditional workplace, it's time to get our home office arrangements figured out.

That's why I would like to share the important details you need to arrange a healthful workspace and encourage all to invest the time (and sometimes a little bit of money) needed to implement them. Learning these points is key to avoiding injuries, as continued work-from-home policies, where feasible, will help maintain appropriate distancing needed to decrease the spread of COVID-19.

An adjustable chair is the first and most important component of an office set-up. Office chairs include crucial lumbar support and encourage good posture. When your forearms are resting on your desk or table, adjust the chair height up or down until your arms form a right angle. This is an important step in avoiding wrist pain and carpal tunnel, two of the most common office injuries. If, when your arms are in the correct position, your feet are not touching the floor, employ a footstool.

Position your monitor an arm’s length away. (If you can't see the screen from this distance, better go get an eye exam!) And raise the screen so that the top of the screen is eye level. This, too, will encourage good posture.

If you use two monitors, positioning them properly depends on how you use them. If you use them equally, the dividing line between them should be right in front of you. If you use one primarily and the other secondarily, position the more dominant screen directly in front of you. If you use a laptop, consider investing in a riser and an additional keyboard needed to raise the screen to eye level.

Put all of your other tools, including your mouse and phone, within easy reach. If you use the phone a lot, consider investing in a headset.

The only other recommendation I make is to stretch every 15 – 20 minutes. A list of helpful office-oriented stretches is available here. And every hour, be sure to get up and take a short walk or standing stretch.

If you follow these recommendations at home, you will be much more comfortable and are likely to be more productive, too, all while maintaining the social distance we need to keep COVID-19 infections low throughout this next phase of the pandemic. Most importantly, you will save yourself the pain and discomfort of office injury no matter where you're working.

Mark Zimpfer, MD, is a physician at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center's Occupational Health practice. 

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