‘With heightened focus on critical vulnerabilities in long-term care settings, it is more important than ever to enhance the skills and core competencies of healthcare providers’
George Brown College in Toronto, Ont. will launch a new postgraduate program in the fall to help improve quality of care in complex and long-term care settings.
Called Interprofessional Complex and Long-Term Care, the program is designed for online delivery and integrates simulation and problem-based learning grounded in educational game and digital open world learning. The virtual learning environment (VLE) trains healthcare professionals working with Ontario's growing senior population.
"With heightened focus on critical vulnerabilities in long-term care settings, it is more important than ever to enhance the skills and core competencies of healthcare providers," said Wendy Ellis, chair of the George Brown College School of Nursing. "Increasing access to programs that not only teach health care, but communication, interprofessional collaboration and problem-solving is crucial. This program gives students the opportunity to collaborate virtually, to learn from each other, and to work towards providing excellent client care."
The program was developed in collaboration with the Ontario Centres for Learning, Research & Innovation in Long-Term Care (CLRI) at Baycrest and Ryerson University, and represents a unique approach to healthcare education, aimed at providing evidence-based, collaborative training for optimal care.
Students will participate in a variety of collaborative real-life scenarios in which interprofessional teams work together to solve clinical cases. Students will also participate in micro lectures, readings and discussions. The two-semester program consists of seven courses, taken at both George Brown and Ryerson University, and includes a 120-hour clinical field placement.
The program is open to all healthcare providers including nurses, personal support workers, dental professionals, fitness specialists and hearing specialists. Graduates can work as coordinators or managers in health-care facilities to deliver interprofessional care.
In 2017 the Canadian Institute for Health Information projected that Canada's population of individuals aged 65 and older would jump by 68 per cent in 20 years.
Ontario’s woes with the long-term care system has come to surface in the past few weeks, especially after the province received reports from the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) which details medical, professional and technical issues present in five long-term care facilities in the province, which the military inspected for over two weeks.
Several unions have called for immediate action from the government to address the crisis just a few days after the province made public the military’s reports on the facilities.
