Projects Updates

The Safer Care for Older Persons in residential Environments (SCOPE) project aims to evaluate the success of a locally led quality improvement model. This year, the project will be launched in Manitoba where 90% of the facilities have been recruited so far. Quality improvement teams are beginning to form at each of the recruited facilities. The Quality Advisor (Michael Haip) has begun meeting with each of the teams to help them to think about an area they would like to work towards improving within their units as part of the SCOPE project. Teams can select from one of three quality improvement areas: Pain, Behavior, or Mobility, and will be provided tools and guidance to help make their selection. Information sessions are currently being held at the SCOPE facilities to inform other staff about the project and to introduce the quality improvement teams. Planning is underway for the upcoming Learning Congress, which will take place on February 8th and 9th in Winnipeg. Everyone is looking forward to formally kicking-off the project at the event!

INFORM

The Improving Nursing Home through Feedback on Performance Data (INFORM) project aims to evaluate different strategies to get research findings back to managers in a timely and effective way that will result in quality of care improvements. We will be testing two feedback packages to determine the strategy that is most effective at fostering improvement in nursing homes. The team is gearing up to begin recruitment in Alberta and British Columbia in the coming months. As such the INFORM coordinator (Fiona Mackenzie) and the team are busy preparing and finalizing the intervention details and securing ethics approvals.

The Advice Seeking Network in Long Term Care project has completed their interviews with advice seekers, boundary spanners, and network leaders in Atlantic provinces. The team will start interviews in the Western and Northern provinces/territories in the coming months. Descriptive statistics, graphic visualizations, and multivariate analysis to identify and understand opinion leadership and overall pattern of advice seeking in each network are ongoing.

Did you know?

Over 41% of care aides from TREC 2.0 facilities have worked as a care aide for over 10 years. This percentage is highest among care aides in Manitoba (49%).

Why Canada needs a national dementia strategy

TREC's scientific director, Dr. Carole Estabrooks recently co-authored a piece with Dr. Howard Feldman discussing the need to develop a national dementia strategy published in Calgary Herald.

Congrats to Dr Wagg

TREC's investigator, Dr. Adrian Wagg was successful with his application to the Covenant Health 2015 Innovation Fund. His proposal "Supporting Healthy Ageing by Peer Education and Support" aims to train and support peer health coaches to promote healthy ageing behaviors that will positively impact the ability of seniors to 'age in community.'

New Team Member

Michael Haip is SCOPE's Quality Advisor for Manitoba. In this role, Michael is leading SCOPE activities amongst a selection of Personal Care Homes in Manitoba. Since 1998, Michael's nursing career has specialized in the management, implementation and adoption of clinical, diagnostic and administrative information systems in British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba. Michael is a graduate of the University of Manitoba (nursing), Schulich School of Business (project management) and Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement fellowship program.

A laugh a day for seniors

A new type of yoga class incorporating laughter help seniors both mentally and physically in Charlottetown senior home.

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