About Dana Mills

FUN FACTS ABOUT ME

•  Twenty-seven years as a health and human service practitioner.

•  Worked with individuals across the life span with varying illnesses/disabilities.

•  Worked in acute care and community care settings primarily physical rehabilitation.

•  Received the Vanguard Award with the Therapeutic Recreation Association of Atlantic Canada, 2009.

• Active membership and volunteer for a variety of professional recreation therapy associations, provincially, regionally, and nationally.

• Skilled group facilitator and presenter

I look to serve in a meaningful way. I have over 25 years’ experience in the health and human services.  I have served people of various abilities across the life span in Alberta, Ontario, and here at home in Nova Scotia. As a proud alumnus from Dalhousie University, I am passionate about the importance of recreation, play and leisure in enhancing the health, wellbeing, and quality of life of individuals and communities. I believe that the human spirit is resilient and has the inner strength to thrive in challenging conditions. I also believe that leisure is a right and contributes to building healthier individuals and better communities. I hold hope in the possibility of leisure as a healing and restorative tool that creates new opportunities that offers positive benefits and affects. My own leisure lifestyle choices nurture connections with others, the world around me, with an intentional focus on my spiritual health. 

I have grown in my own pratice through having various experiences both personal and professional that has led to nuturing an awareness that experiencing life includes death. I believe that end of life care is a human right that involves living as well as possible until death, and to die with dignity. End of life care is a learning process that provides guidance and support towards positive learning and skill growth to care for a loved one to have the most positive experience with death.

What I HOPE for in my service to others:

• I hope to provide information and resources.

• I hope to design activities that contribute to positive quality of life and well-being at end of life.

• I hope to offer holistic support and care.

• I hope to provide a person-centred, strength-based, and solution-focused approach.

• I hope to foster knowledge, nurture guidance, and deliver emotional, spiritual and practical care.

• I hope to enrich the end-of-life experience through a meaningful and therapeutic relationship.

• I hope to help bridge the gap between the medical and non-medical end of life support.

• I hope to collaborate and deliver best practices to those I serve.

• I hope to decrease caregiver syndrome and provide coping strategies to manage the end-of-life experience.