Annual General Meeting 2015

TREC welcomed its researchers, decision makers, and collaborators from Canada, US, and the UK at the Annual General Meeting on June 4 and 5 in Edmonton. We updated our stakeholders on our research activities and preliminary research results. This year's theme was return on investment. A report will be sent to those who attended this week.

Highlights

We had two special guest speakers Dr. Sube Banerjee, Professor of Dementia at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, and Dr. Ruth Anderson, Virginia Stone Professor of Nursing at Duke University. Dr Banerjee delivered a captivating talk at the evening reception titled Living and Dying Well with Dementia. Dr Anderson's exciting talk was about her research program called CONNECT, an innovative falls prevention intervention in US nursing homes.

“You are more likely to die well with dementia if you live well with dementia."

- Dr. Sube Banerjee

“Researchers have the science to deal with complex issues in nursing homes. Staff are the ones who need to apply the knowledge."

- Dr. Ruth Anderson

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Postdoctoral fellow opportunities with TREC

TREC is looking for three postdoctoral fellows interested in working in long term care research. We invite applicants with research interests in health services research, epidemiology, nursing or a related field. We are interested in individuals with experience in quantitative analysis and working with large databases in the long term care sector. Please share the postings on your networks!

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TREC Welcomes Summer Students

TREC welcomed a group of bright young scholars this summer. The students join us as part of the University of Alberta Research Experience and TVN Summer Student Award programmes and are learning about and participating in TREC research activities. The five TREC summer students are:

Leo Akioyamen | McMaster University
Sol Baik | Seoul National University, South Korea
Hu Huimin | Sichuan University, China
Angelle Kent | University of Alberta
Xiong Tianyuan | Sichuan University, China

System Projects

In this issue of the newsletter we want to introduce you to some of our other projects. In addition to the three major TREC projects (TMS, SCOPE, and Advice Seeking Network in LTC), which we update you on in our monthly newsletter, TREC also runs a series of smaller projects which allow for quick deliverables to the long term care sector. These projects are sector driven and outcome focused to improve system efficiency, which is why we refer to them as "System Projects". The two current system projects are the "Trajectories" and "Canary" projects.

Trajectories

The Trajectories project seeks to describe trajectories of burdensome (modifiable) symptoms in nursing home residents in the last year of life, compare these trajectories between residents with and without dementia, and between residents in high and low context facilities.

We found that treatable symptoms increased as the end of life approached and found significant differences between persons with and without dementia and between facilities with high and low context (quality work environments). The results are published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.

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Canary

The Canary project is a proof of concept which uses the existing TREC database with the aim of defining an early warning system for nursing homes in Alberta.

We are looking to develop a system which could detect perturbations in the residential LTC sector that have a high probability of indicating need for in-depth investigation in the sector.

We will use advanced analytic modeling of the TREC data to determine the properties of the proposed system.

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