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, Toronto) and Dr. Alex Mihailidis (AGE WELL Scientific Director and University of Toronto) will lead this initiative in conjunction with the Health Care Standards Association.
The goal of the Health Care Standards Association is “to unleash the power and potential of people around the world who share our passion for achieving quality health services for all.“ The articulated goal of the specific work focusing on long-term care standards is described as follows:
“The Health Care Standards Organization is co-designing new standards for care and services provided by Canada's long-term care (LTC) homes. Our goal is to ensure that the more than 250,000 Canadians who call LTC settings their home receive the high quality of care they need and deserve.”
Patients and family members, policy makers, representatives from health care organisations, researchers and others with relevant knowledge will be considered for inclusion in this committee. This initiative marks an opportunity to develop improved standards for sufficiently frequent and high quality pain assessments in LTC homes. It is my hope that the committees will recognize the gaps in pain care that now exist along with solutions that are available but not widely implemented.
- Thomas Hadjistavropoulos, Ph.D. How You Can Help?
Would you like to share your thoughts on our See Pain More Clearly campaign and the use of social media to mobilize knowledge about pain in dementia?
We are looking for policymakers, researchers, healthcare workers and family caregivers to participate in a study to evaluate the effectiveness of the #SeePainMoreClearly social media initiative to mobilize knowledge about pain in dementia.
Dr. Hadjistavropoulos is an international leader in the area of pain assessment in dementia and has shown leadership in the promotion of the health sciences at the local, national and international level. He is the Research Chair in Aging and Health, Director of the Centre on Aging and Health and Professor of Psychology at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. He served as the 2007 President of the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA).