The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating consequences for both staff and residents of long-term care homes. If there is one silver lining into the tragedy that ensued, it is that the pandemic raised awareness of problems and limitations that exist in many long-term care environments. As a reflection of the increased public attention that long-term care has been receiving, our research has demonstrated a 450% increase in the number of relevant social media posts on Twitter

A Presentation On LTC Policy Change

n our latest article we share exciting news about LTC Standards in Canada from Mary Brachaniec, a careiver partner and member of the #SeePai

Dr. Thomas Hadjistavropoulos, was recently invited to present over Zoom to the Alzheimers Society of Alberta and North West Territories

There is a shortage of clinicians and scientists with expertise in geriatrics and gerontology.

Will Scientific Journals Publish The Findings Of The #SeePainMoreClearly Campaign? Find out in the article by Dr Thomas Hadjistavropoulos

My friend and colleague Dr. Judith Watt-Watson, a Professor Emerita from the University of Toronto, published an article back in 2009 documenting gaps in the pain curricula of Canadian health science faculties. Specifically, she looked at medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, physical therapy and occupational therapy training programs. She found that the majority of these programs could not identify specific designated hours for pain education. Only 32.5% of participating

We created this website as a repository of information for health professionals, family members, policy makers and researchers. Our focus is on pain in dementia. We have divided the Resources section of the website into three subsections labelled For Health Professionals, For Older Adults and Caregivers and For Researchers. The Health Professionals section contains links to principles of pain assessment in dementia and links to suitable pain assessment tools, including a link

, pain care should be a priority. Assessing and managing pain is always important but becomes even more critical during the era of COVID-19

I do not remember another extended time period during my lifetime when long-term care (LTC) has received as much media attention as it has during the era of COVID-19. The circumstances surrounding LTC, that have come to the forefront over the last year, have been tragic: death, devastation, loneliness, social isolation, along with constraints in resource and staffing levels, quality of care and infection control practices. These limitations were well known among many who wor

Tom Kitwood was among the first to recognize the importance of personhood in the care of people with dementia. In simple terms, personhood in this context refers to the extent to which we perceive another person as a human being first as opposed to a patient with dementia first (i.e., a host of pathology). Do we value the person with dementia, as a social being, for who they are and for all that they have accomplished in their lives? Failure to ascribe such status to people

Over the years our team has investigated the impact of stereotypes in judgements of another’s pain. First we studied these phenomena in young people and demonstrated that, everything being equal, patients who are physically attractive are perceived as having less pain than patients who are less physically attractive. This is due to a “what is beautiful is healthy” stereotype. In other words, people tend to perceive physically attractive patients as healthier and, thus, as b

In our latest article, guest contributor Linda Bates Lawson shares her Fathers day memories. With Father’s Day coming up, I am thinking about my father, Aubrey Bates. He was, in every sense of the word, a family man. His family was the most important thing in his life. He and my mom had two sons and three daughters. We grew up in the 50s, 60s and 70s. I have fond memories when we kids enjoyed lots of freedom playing outdoors with the neighbourhood children. Dad was home at di

One of my most prominent teachers, the late Ronald Melzack, used to advise new researchers to not try to solve a simple problem but to find

Prominent Globe & Mail health reporter, André Picard, recently published his latest book “Neglected No More"

The #SeePainMoreClearly video, summarizes some of the most important aspects of the evidence base about pain in dementia

Canada has begun the process of creating national standards for long-term care (LTC) facilities. This is truly a rare opportunity and very welcome news because LTC is under provincial jurisdiction and, as a result, regulations vary across the country. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed numerous deficiencies in the quality of care that we offer residents of LTC homes and this is an occasion to make a real difference. Dr. Samir Sinha (Director of Geriatrics, Sinai Health, Toro

Did you know that the vast majority of research findings never make their way into widespread clinical practice? The minority of research findings that make it into practice, take an average of 17 years to get there! We have known for at least a couple of decades that pain in dementia is underassessed, underrecognized and undermanaged because people with moderate to severe dementia have limited ability to communicate their pain experience verbally. They cannot always tell us

COVID-19 has caused many problems for seniors in long-term care homes. We have seen COVID-19 outbreaks with tragic consequences including death, hospitalizations and even staff leaving the job because of increased stress and limited personal protective equipment. For the purposes of infection control, facilities restricted access to visitors with devastating psychological consequences for many seniors and their families. Efforts have been made to improve these conditions inc

We would like to show our support and appreciation of caregivers. April 6th is National Caregivers Day. In Canada, 2 out of 3 caregivers are providing assistance to an older adult. That’s 5.4 million caregivers.* Family Caregivers The trend of involving patient partners and caregiver partners as full members of health care research teams is relatively new and has evolved in Canada over the last decade. Granting agencies that support health research began to emphasize increas