November 2017

Getting to know TREC series

TREC today: Real change through multi-faceted research

Many TREC research studies identify specific targets that could yield significant improvements from relatively small changes at ground zero—directly for residents and the staff who care for them. Other studies target strategies to spread innovative and effective practices throughout the nursing home sector.

The platform for all TREC’s work is the longitudinal TREC Measurement System (TMS). The TMS has matured into a research technology that has been collecting resident, staff, care unit and facility data for 10 years now. From this TMS platform, TREC researchers develop and carry out smaller, short-term projects to create change on many fronts.

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Webinar replay

Going it alone: Unbefriended older adults in long term care

If you missed the webinar by TREC PhD student Stephanie Chamberlain on October 31, you can click above to watch it. This was an integrated KTE webinar event brought to you by brainXchange in partnership with the Alzheimer Society of Canada and the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA).

Summary: Long term care residents are ‘unbefriended’ if they lack decision-making capacity and a family member or a friend to act as their guardian. Little is known about these residents although they are among the most vulnerable older adults generally and especially in long term care. Stephanie Chamberlain and Dr Carole Estabrooks will describe a research project examining the characteristics and potentially unmet care needs of unbefriended residents in long term care. This presentation will describe what is currently known about unbefriended residents and selected preliminary results from interviews with long term care staff and public guardian representatives in Alberta.

What we've been up to

Visited Fraser & Interior Health

Last week we flew to Abbotsford and Kelowna to visit and talk to Decision Makers in the Fraser Health and Interior Heatlh regions. Carole Estabrooks, Peter Norton, Jason Sutherland, and Charlotte Berendonk discussed the status of the TREC research program. We also presented some findings from our TMS data (Wave 1, which we collected 2014 and 2015) and explored the regional differences we see in it. It was a pleasure to see all of those who attended the meetings.

Presented at CAG's annual conference

We were excited to present the latest findings from our projects at this year's annual conference of the Canadian Association on Gerontology (CAG) in Winnipeg. The SCOPE team presented a poster with their findings from the Manitoba trial. The Advice Seeking Network in Long Term Care project members presented their findings in the form of a symposium which was chaired by Dr Janice Keefe. This also included a panel discussion with individuals from the healthcare sector.

Welcome to our

New staff and students

Yuting Song joins us at the University of Alberta as a post-doctoral fellow with our SCOPE project. She completed her PhD in August 2017 at Duke University. Her doctoral work focused on understanding residents’ care needs related to pain and functional limitations and how the care environment supports or fails to support residents’ care needs. She aims to develop quality-improvement interventions that integrate both residents, family members, and formal caregivers in providing high-quality care for long-term care residents.

Carolyn Brandly joins TREC as the SCOPE project’s Quality Advisor for BC. She brings more than 17 years experience planning, delivering and evaluating services for seniors in community and care settings. For the past 2 years she has been involved with facilitating collaborative quality improvement in residential care from the physician perspective. She is currently completing her MA in Leadership (Health) with a research focus on building dementia-friendly communities.

Helen Doan is our newest Masters student. She has worked in elder care in various roles, from healthcare aide to floor nurse. Currently, Helen is a Director of Nursing at a facility where she institutes and maintains programs in collaboration with the interdisciplinary team to reduce: wounds, falls, catheters, end-of-life discomfort, over-prescribing, and inappropriate antipsychotic use. By working with the TREC team, her goal is to discover innovative ways to further the knowledge and development of best-practices for elder care.

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Like us on Facebook!

We have created a Facebook page for TREC where you'll be able to find more updates and news about us, and other stories and research about long term care in Canada that are making a difference. Don't forget to share our page!

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Translating Research in Elder Care

University of Alberta

Edmonton, AB T6C 0A1

Canada

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Translating Research in Elder Care · University of Alberta · Edmonton, AB T6C 0A1 · Canada