Changing Long-Term Care, During and Beyond COVID-19
04/23/2021
Bruyère is one of the 22 implementation science teams, and one of nearly a hundred long-term care (LTC) and retirement homes across Canada that has committed to Healthcare Excellence Canada’s LTC+: Acting on Pandemic Learning Together program. Designed to address and strengthen pandemic preparedness and response through rapid research and sharing of lessons, teams across Canada are focused on preparation, prevention, people in the workforce, pandemic response and surge capacity, plan for COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 care, and the presence of family.
The Bruyère Research Institute is proud to be a part of five LTC+ implementation science projects.
Presence of Family: (re)Integrating Family Caregivers
Spearheaded by Jamie Conklin, PhD, the project supports the Designated Care Partner (DCP) programs implemented in several Ontario long-term care homes. Recognizing the importance of care partners to residents in providing physical and psycho-social care, the DCP program grants safe access to long-term care homes. The project will develop, evaluate, and disseminate best practices to support homes implementing a care partner program and support the sharing of findings to participating long-term care homes.
RESPECT-LTC
Implementing and evaluating the Risk Evaluation for Support: Predictions for Elder-life in the Community Tool in Long-Term Care (RESPECT-LTC) is a step towards embedding palliative approaches to care in long-term care homes. This work, led by Amy Hsu, PhD, aims to support palliative approaches by integrating this mortality-risk communication tool into the processes and culture of care providers in efforts to inform decision-making regarding the initiation of palliative or end-of-life care.
Improving Prescribing of Medications at the End-Of-Life in Long-Term Care Homes Through the COVID-19 Pandemic
Symptom management at end-of-life is an important part of palliative care for long-term care residents, but long-term care providers may not have the expertise to navigate the prescription of essential medication. Led by Dr. Peter Tanuseputro, this study involves creating a new quality indicator for palliative and end-of-life care across long-term homes to improve low prescribers’ capacity to handle deaths during the pandemic and continue to improve end-of-life care beyond COVID-19.
Design Interventions to Support Infection Prevention and Control in Long-term Care
Led by Chantal Trudel of Carleton University, Bruyère investigators are heavily involved in the research and development of design interventions in long-term care spaces to improve infection prevention and control practices. The team will evaluate design characteristics of shared spaces, residential features that are challenging to disinfect, and will be identifying work and traffic flow of staff, residents, and families to identify patterns and spaces that presently undermine infection prevention and control practices.
MedSafer-Optimizing Prescribing for Pandemic Preparedness
MedSafer, an electronic decision support tool for medication management, interfaces with patient electronic medical records. The study, led by Dr. Emily McDonald at McGill University, is supported by Bruyère investigators to explore MedSafer’s use in long-term care settings. As staff and residents continue to navigate COVID-19, this tool may help reduce pill burden and adverse drug events, prevent adverse drug event-associated escalation of care, and increase care provider efficiency.