May 11-12, 2026
A Culture of Careing

Group Panel: Kathleen Klaasen, Genevieve Thompson, Deanne O'Rourke, & Kelly Dutiaume

Riverview Health Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, has embarked on a whole-organization culture transformation journey to embrace and sustain Person Directed Living. What makes this endeavor exceptional is the breath of organizational change and adoption of Person Directed Living undertaken across a variety of living spaces and clinical care and services. Largely, Person Directed Living philosophies have been applied to long term care/nursing home environments. However, Riverview Health Centre provides a range of living (long term care, dementia care, chronic care), transitional care (palliative, neurological rehabilitation), and community support and outreach services (day hospital, diagnostic clinic services, and community social programs). Our intent is to integrate these principles into the daily functioning, interactions and fabric of all programs and teams across the organization. This hands-on session, will describe the evidence-informed and organic approach to culture transformation Riverview has embarked on, allowing participants the opportunity to explore the possibilities for their own organization. To this effect, we will describe the journey we have embarked upon and progress to date, guided by our Person Directed Living Implementation Model. Participants will have the opportunity to examine their organizational context, living environment, workplace practices, and care process and understand the importance of the Person Directed Living Commitments as a foundational guide for integration within a culture transformation model. We will share the specific steps Riverview has undertaken to document our journey and monitor the impact and outcome of this change. Part of this is discussing the small, medium and large investments that organizations may want to consider when embarking on this transformation. Overall, we see that Person Directed Living is not a ‘program’ in the sense that once the attention is turned to other things or priorities, it fades away and people return to the ‘usual’ way of doing things. The intent of Person Directed Living is to create lasting change through replacement of an existing culture with a new one. Person Directed Living becomes part of the fabric of the organization and serves as the basis in how we think, act, problem-solve, make decisions, and treat each other.