Care community comes up rosy

Newly appointed Macpherson Smith Care Community manager Rosie Taylor is pictured with resident Merle.

Macpherson Smith Residential Care’s new manager wants to further progress the positive changes recently made at the Stawell care community.

From both sides of the world, Rosie Taylor has a wealth of experience in nursing and particular in aged care. She began her career in the United Kingdom, working in aged care and also in orthopaedics, palliative care and general medicine.

Rosie came to Australia in 2009 and did correctional nursing in the prison system for a decade as well as district nursing. While living in Geelong, she moved into aged care as a nurse in charge at Calvary Care in Torquay for three years before moving to Halls Gap while working as an agency nurse.

Rosie said her agency role took her from her mountain lodgings to all parts of rural Victoria including aged care facilities at St Arnaud, Dimboola and Natimuk, before starting with Grampians Health last year and settling at Stawell.

“I’ve always enjoyed aged care nursing and especially looking after people with dementia,” Rosie said.

“During my journey as ward nurse in the UK I always enjoyed working with elderly admissions and even when I worked as a corrections nurse, I always knew I wanted to get back into aged care.

“As an agency nurse, I was getting quite a few shifts at McPherson Smith so I got to know the residents really well plus their families and the team so I knew this was where I wanted to be.”

Rosie said she liked the direction aged care was taking at Grampians Health.

“I really want to give both the residents and their families more ownership into their daily activities and to ensure that individually, they are each spending each day doing exactly what they want to do and not necessarily what’s on the program,” she said.

“Grampians Health’s new Meaningful Life team led by Daniella Bell have already made some really positive changes in this area”.

“The activities have really improved recently and the Meaningful Life team have done so well in making sure the residents are getting lots of variety and choice in their activities and they are getting to do what they want to do.

“Some like being in their room, others like going out for a walk and we are really tailoring preferences to their needs and I really like how they’ve done that.”

Rosie said her goal was to make sure during the admission process that her team learned exactly what a new resident liked to do.

“We want to make sure they have that opportunity to keep doing those things while giving them really good care. Everything they do should be their choice.

“We have a lot of fresh faces in the care community team at McPherson Smith now and a lot of them have come from different aged care facilities and are bringing different ideas with them that we can play around with. They have brought a fresh vibe.”

Rosie said living and working in England’s Midlands was always very busy.

“Where I worked we were super busy, always short staffed and we had crazy days but we also had a really good team. So, no matter how tough the day got, we supported each other – and that’s what I want for my team as well,” she said.

Rosie likes bush walking and four-wheel-drive activities as well as shopping at open markets.

“I basically enjoy the Grampians because I’m an outdoors person.”