University of Alberta

2009 Announcements

TREC in 2009

December

  • Carole Estabrooks, Peter Norton, Greta Cummings and Lisa Cranley (postdoctoral trainee) have received Health Canada funding to undertake a Safer Healthcare Now (SHN!) project looking at Quality and Safety in Elder Care in Alberta and BC’s Interior Health Authority.

November

  • Greta Cummings (Co-PI and nominated PI) and Joanne Konnert (Co-PI and principal decision- maker) were awarded a CIHR Partnerships for Health System Improvement grant (PHSI) with B.C. Interior Health Authority, Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and AHFMR contributing funds as well. The study titled Older Persons Transitions in Care (OPTIC) examines transitions between nursing homes and emergency departments.

October

  • Carole Estabrooks, Ali Hutchinson (post doctoral trainee) and Greta Cummings (Alberta provincial lead) received an AHFMR Knowledge Transfer/Exchange Research Grant to evaluate a knowledge translation intervention in a sample of Alberta nursing homes participating in the TREC research program. This study will determine the most feasible, understandable, usable and useful method of providing feedback reports of survey data to HCAs working in Alberta LTC.

  • TREC researchers presented at the Canadian Association on Gerontology on Oct. 22-24/09 in Winnipeg:

  • Symposium

  • Lesley Degner, University of Manitoba. Symposium on Methodological Tools to Facilitate an Observational Examination of Context in Long Term Care and its Impact on Knowledge Transfer and Practice

  • Allison Cammer, University of Saskatchewan. Assessing context in long term care: A guiding framework for qualitative examination of context

  • Linda Niehaus, University of Alberta. Care in Context: A tool to Explore critical incidents or key events in Long Term Care

  • Christine Kreklewetz, University of Manitoba. Knowledge use questions as a strategy to facilitate health care provider self-reflection and data collection in research

  • Poster

  • Carole Estabrooks, Peter Norton, Susan Slaughter, Anastasia Mallidou, Greta Cummings, Debra Morgan. Nursing home context associated with professional nurse job satisfaction.

  • Duane Minish has taken on the Research Manager role in Saskatchewan.

  • Christine Kreklewetz has returned from maternity leave to resume her position as Research Associate in Manitoba.

September

  • Corinne Marceau joined TREC as a Research Assistant in Alberta

August

  • Midterm review submitted to Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

  • All 36 sites have been recruited - 15 from Alberta, 13 from Saskatchewan (6 of the 13 are rural sites) and 8 from Manitoba

July

  • Wave 1 of data collection was completed on July 15, 2009. Wave 2 began immediately and we have already completed data collection in our first site.

  • Two posters were presented by two of our Postdoctoral Fellows, Anne-Marie Bostrom and Susan Slaughter, at the 19th IAGG World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics in Paris, France

  • Lisa Cranley, a Postdoctoral Fellow and TREC Trainee, was awarded the Elizabeth Dickson Knowledge Translation Fellowship Prize by CIHR along with a CIHR Fellowship in the area of Knowledge Translation. Congratulations Lisa!

June

  • Caroline Clark is the new Vice Chair for the Research Management Committee

  • We held our Annual General Meeting June 9 & 10 in Edmonton.

  • Due to the recent changes within Alberta Health Services, our new Alberta Decision Makers are:

  • Caroline Clark, Executive Director, Seniors Health, Alberta Health Services

  • Belle Gowriluk, Director, Integrated, Supportive & Facility Living, Alberta Health Services

  • Donna Stelmachovich, VP, Seniors Health, Alberta Health Services

April

  • Lisa Cranley (University of Toronto PhD) joined KUSP this month. She quickly has been brought into some grant writing and other writing. In May, she will be in Australia presenting some of her work

  • Our provincial research managers met in Edmonton to review progress and plan for the next wave of data collection.

  • Celebrations were short-lived but hearty when we realized that in just one year we undertook development, testing, training, implementation, and report generation for Project 1 data collection and all without losing one piece of data!

  • The Project 2 team met with our UK investigators to begin analyzing their field notes.

March

  • The TREC Data Management Committee met in Edmonton this month and as part of our commitment to share expertise across the team, offered 4 educational sessions to trainees of the unit and invited others. Response was very positive as the interaction with leaders in the field was greatly appreciated.

February

  • The TREC team has reached a milestone of 1000 completed surveys.

  • 17 of 36 sites have completed data collection.