Data collection has begun for
TMS Wave 7
Starting September 5th, 2023, TREC has officially started the 7th wave of our TMS survey in Alberta! The TMS survey is the platform project of the TREC research program, exploring the associations between work environment, best practice use, and resident outcomes since 2007. During our last wave of surveys collected in the fall of 2021, we started to understand the impact of COVID-19 on Long Term Care homes, residents, and staff. This time, we want to better understand staff health and well-being following the height of the pandemic.
In our first month of data collection, we’ve completed data collection in 7 homes including more than 200 surveys among Care Aides and over 150 surveys from regulated staff. Our field team is working tirelessly to recruit, schedule, and survey staff in more than 60 homes across Alberta within all 5 five health zones. Stay tuned for more updates as data collection continues!
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Our congratulations to
Dr. Yuting Song
We would like to extend our congratulations to Dr. Yuting Song on receiving a national-level project fund from the Natural Science Foundation of China for her project titled The Causal Pathways and Cognition-Emotion Intervention Strategies for Missed Care in Long-Term Care Homes: A Study Based on the Decision Lens. The grant is worth approximately $50,000CAD and will run from January 2024 to December 2026. The project abstract is below:
Missed care in long-term care homes threatens the health and quality of life of older adults living in the homes. Previous research suggests that 57% of care aides reported having missed care. Therefore, effective strategies for missed care are key for care quality improvement in long-term care homes. However, the current approaches to reducing missed care are mainly focused on care aides’ work environment, while neglecting their internal decision making processes. Drawing on care aides’ decision lens, this project will first build on the Naturalist Decision Making Theory and the Emotion-imbued Choice Model to develop the analysis framework for the interrelationships between the internal decision making and external environment, to unpack the mechanism of how missed care occurs. We will then draw on Endsley’s Situation Awareness Theory and Gross’ Emotion Regulation Model and target care aides’ capacity for situation awareness and emotion management to build cognition-emotion intervention strategies based on the internal decision making processes. Lastly, we will conduct a randomized clinical trial to test the effectiveness of the intervention strategies along with process evaluation to guide further development of the intervention. This project aims to unpack the mechanism of missed care and construct intervention strategies, which will not only enrich the theoretical system in the field of long-term care quality improvement, but also address important gaps in existing interventions and approaches. The findings will provide critical evidence for relevant departments to identify intervention targets and effective responses to missed care issues.
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Care Aides' Experiences of Caring for
Residents with a History of Trauma
This in-depth qualitative PhD trainee project aims to better understand Care Aides' experiences caring for residents with a history of psychological trauma. We know that a significant percentage of LTC residents have a history of trauma and that events like COVID-19 or even admission to a LTC home can trigger PTSD symptoms. This study is the first large study to focus directly on what care aides have to say about the challenges and rewards of caring for this group. It will also point to solutions to support better approaches and to make it easier for both residents and staff. This study is underway!
Where are we now?
In depth interviews with care aides from 8 Alberta long-term care homes started in April 2023. The preliminary analysis of data from the first 13 interviews is underway.
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Data collection continues for the
Missed Care Project
The Missed Care Project continues to collect data with Health Care Aides in long-term care homes. The project is gathering rich information and we look forward to starting Phase Two in the new year.
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We are developing the
Breathing Toolkit 2.0
The Breathing Toolkit Project is well underway! We are currently building the contents of the toolkit that can be used by long term care staff to learn about and practice Coherent Breathing. The toolkit will be housed on a website and will include three professional videos, infographics, and links to publications from the original study, complemented by lay summaries.
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Celebrations, congratulations and welcomes
Staff and Trainees
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Sevilay Kilmen, PhD, joined TREC in August 2023 as a data analyst. Previously, she worked as a visiting professor at the Program of Measurement, Evaluation and Data Science, U of A and as a research associate at the Faculty of Nursing. She graduated with a PhD in Measurement and Evaluation from Ankara University, and is experienced in psychometrics, developing a test, ensuring validity and reliability of tests and employing advanced statistical methods. Her research interests are test design, item response theory, measurement invariance and differential item functioning.
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Toni Chua joined TREC in September 2023. She is a first-year Master of Nursing student in the NP-adult program. Her experiences as an RN in long-term care have sparked her interest in gerontological nursing. She is excited to join TREC as a research assistant and is helping with the Breathing Toolkit team.
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Tatiana Penconek joined TREC as a Project Coordinator for the Breathing Toolkit 2.0 Project in September 2023. She is currently a Doctoral Candidate in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta. Her research interests include issues affecting the nursing workforce including incivility, job satisfaction, and turnover, with an overall aim of improving the quality of worklife of the nursing workforce and quality of care of patients and residents.
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Read our
2023 TREC Publications
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January
- Titley, HK., Young, S., Savage, A., Thorne, T., Spiers, J., Estabrooks, CA. (2023, Jan). Cracks in the foundation: The experience of care aides in long-term care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 71(1): 198-205 doi:10.1111/jgs.18024
- Song, Y., Thorne, T., Duan, Y., Cummings, G.G., Norton, P., Squires, J., Estabrooks, C.A. (2023, Jan). Pre-COVID-19 Work Life Quality of Regulated Nurses in Canadian Nursing Homes. Geriatrics & Gerontology International. 23(2): 148-150 doi: 10.1111/ggi.14536
February
- Thorne, T.E., Duan, Y., Slubik, S., Estabrooks, C.A. (2023, Feb) Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on health, well-being and quality of work-life outcomes among direct care nursing staff working in nursing home settings: Protocol for systemic review. JMIR Research Protocols. 12: e40390.(https://www.researchprotocols.org/2023/1/e40390) doi:10.2196/40390
- Estabrooks, C.A., Duan, Y., Cummings, G.G., Doupe, M., Hoben, M., Keefe, J., Poss, J. Song, Y., Squires, J.E., Wagg, A., Norton, P.G. (2023, Feb). Changes in health and well-being of nursing home managers from a prepandemic baseline in February 2020 to December 2021. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association (JAMDA). 24(2):148-155 doi:10.1016/j.jamda.2022.12.004
- MacEachern, L., Ginsburg, L.R., Hoben, M., Doupe, M., Wagg, A., Knopp-Sihota, J., Cranley, L., Song, Y., Estabrooks, C.A., Berta, W. (2023, Feb). Developing a tool to measure enactment of complex quality improvement interventions in healthcare. BMJ Open Quality. 12(1):e002027
doi: 10.1136/bmjoq-2022-002027.
March
- Gruneir, A., Hoben, M., Easterbrook, A., Jensen, C., Buencamino, M., Tompalski, J., Chamberlain, S., Ekhlas, S., Bever, G., Murphy, R., Estabrooks, C., Keefe, J., Marshall, S. (2023, Mar). Exploring nursing home resident and their care partner priorities for care using the Action-Project Method. BMC Geriatrics. 23(1): 1-11 doi: 10.1186/s12877-023-03863-9
- Wagg, A., Hoben, M., Ginsburg, L., Doupe, M., Berta, W., Song, Y., Norton, P., Knopp-Sihota, J., Estabrooks, C. (2023, March). Safer Care for Older Persons in (residential) Environments (SCOPE): a pragmatic controlled trial of a care aide-led quality improvement intervention. Implementation Science. 18(1): 1-14 doi: 10.1186/s13012-022-01259-8
April
- Duan, Y., Song, Y., Thorne, T., Iaconi, A., Norton, P., Estabrooks, C. (2023, April). The complexity of burnout experiences among care aides: A person-oriented approach to burnout patterns. HealthCare. 11(8): 1145. doi: 10.3390/healthcare11081145
May
- Song, Y., Nassur, A.M., Rupasinghe, V., Haq, F., Boström, A-M., Reid, R., Andersen, E., Wagg, A., Hoben, M., Goodarzi, Z., Squires, J., Estabrooks, C.A., Weeks, L. (2023, May). Factors associated with residents’ responsive behaviours towards staff in long-term care homes: a systematic review. The Gerontologist. 63(4):674-689 doi: 10.1093/geront/gnac016
June
- Ginsburg, L., Easterbrook, A., Massie, A., Berta, W., Doupe, M., Hoben, M., Norton, P., Reid, C., Song, Y., Wagg, A., Estabrooks, C. (2023, June). Building a program theory of implementation using process evaluation of a complex quality improvement trial in nursing homes. The Gerontologist. XX, 1-14 doi: 10.1093/geront/gnad064 (ePub ahead of print)
- Poss, J.W., Silvius, J., Hoben, M., Wagg, A., Doupe, M., Norton, P., Scott, L., Estabrooks, C.A. (2023, June). Agreement between two sources of antipsychotic coding before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in long-term care. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association (JAMDA). 24(6):923-925 doi: 10.1016/j.jamda.2023.03.041
- Hoben, M., Dymchuck, E., Corbett, K., Devkota, R., Shrestha, S., Lam, J., Banerjee, S., Chamberlain, S., Cummings, G., Doupe, M., Duan, Y., Keefe, J., O’Rourke, H., Saeidzadeh, S., Song, Y., Estabrooks, C. (2023, June). Factors associated with the quality of life of nursing home residents during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. 24(6):876-884.e5 doi: 10.1016/j.jamda.2023.03.033
July
- Hoben, M., Hogan, D., Poss, J., Gruneir, A., McGrail, K., Griffith, K., Chambe, S., Estabrooks, C., Maxwell, C. (2023, July). Comparing quality of care outcomes between assisted living and nursing homes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of American Geriatrics Society. doi: 10.1111/jgs.18499 (ePub ahead of print)
- Estabrooks, C.A., Ewa, V., Keefe, J., Straus, S.E. (2023, July 24) The predictable crisis of covid-19 in Canada’s long term care homes. British Medical Journal (BMJ). 382:e075148.
doi: 10.1136/bmj-2023-075148
August
- Song, Y., Bolt, S., Thorne, T., Norton, P., Poss, J., Fu, F., Squires, J., Cummings, G., Estabrooks, C. (2023, Aug 11) Nursing assistants’ use of best practices and pain in older adults living in nursing homes. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. doi: 10.1111/jgs.18527 (ePub ahead of print)
- Chamberlain, S.A., Fu, F., Akinlawon, O., Estabrooks, C.A., Gruneir, A. (2023, Aug 16) Characterizing worker compensation claims in long-term care and examining the association between facility characteristics and severe injury: A repeated cross-sectional study from Alberta, Canada. BMC Human Resources for Health. 21(1):63. doi: 10.1186/s12960-023-00850-4.
- Ginsburg, L., Hoben, M., Berta, W., Doupe, M., Estabrooks, C., Toth, F., Norton, P., Reid, R.C., Seguin, A., Wagg, A. (2023, Aug 30) Development and validation of the Overall Fidelity Enactment Scale for Complex Interventions (OFES-CI). BMJ Quality & Safety.
doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2023-016001 (open access; ePub ahead of print)
- Song, Y.; Keefe, J.; Squires, J.; DeGraves, B.; Duan, Y.; Cummings, G.; Doupe, M.; Hoben, M.; Duynisveld, A.; Norton, P.; Poss, J.; Estabrooks, C. (2023, Aug 30). Changes in health and well-being of care aides in nursing homes from a pre-pandemic baseline in February 2020 to December 2021. Journal of Applied Gerontology. doi: 10.1177/07334648231197074 (ePub ahead of print)
September
- Duan, Y., Hoben, M., Song, Y., Chamberlain, S.A., Iaconi, A., Choroschun, K., Shrestha, S., Cummings, G.G., Norton, P.N., Estabrooks, C.A. (2023, Sept 5) Organizational context and quality indicators in nursing homes: A microsystem look. Journal of Applied Gerontology. doi: 10.1177/07334648231200110 (ePub ahead of print)
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