TeamSTEPPS 2.0 for Long-Term Care

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) TeamSTEPPS 2.0 for Long-Term Care curriculum reflects updates to the original TeamSTEPPS in Long-Term Care curriculum, which was released to the public in 2012. Since then, AHRQ released TeamSTEPPS 2.0, an update to the original curriculum that focuses on hospital-based teams. As a result, AHRQ has sponsored the development of an updated curriculum for use in the long-term care setting. The updated Long-Term Care curriculum (“2.0”) includes changes such as:

• An updated Course Management Guide to provide information about the course and about preparing for and providing instruction.
• An updated Evidence Base for each skill-based module.
• The addition of an advance organizer to each module to provide an overview of each module’s content, activities, and instructional materials.
• The relocation of the Communication module to earlier in the curriculum to better align with the emphasis on preventing communication errors within teams and the fact that most of the tools and strategies are conducted through communication.
• The addition of the Measurement module to provide instruction and resources to support the assessment of the effectiveness of implementation efforts.
• Improvements to the usability and flow of materials, including addressing redundancies, clearly labeling resources, and adding page numbers to the Instructor Manual.

To view the updated curriculum, click here: http://bit.ly/2A13e0m

Views and Experiences with End-of-Life Medical Care in Japan, Italy, the United States, and Brazil: A Cross-Country Survey

In partnership with The Economist, the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a cross-country survey of adults in Japan, Italy, the United States, and Brazil about people’s views and experiences related to aging and end-of-life medical care. These four countries are each at a different stage of population aging. On one end of the spectrum, Japan is the world’s oldest country (27 percent are ages 65 and older) and has the longest life expectancy along with a shrinking overall population . Italy is not far behind, with a population that is 21 percent elderly, the largest proportion among European nations . The United States is in the middle of the aging trajectory, with the share of the population ages 65 and older expected to grow from about 15 percent in 2015 to 24 percent by 2060 . At the other end of the spectrum, Brazil has a relatively young population today, but due to recent changes in mortality and fertility, the share of the population that is elderly is expected to double (from 7 percent to 14 percent) by 2031. These four countries also reflect different cultural and institutional considerations when it comes to preparing and providing care for those near the end of life, and both the demographic and cultural differences are reflected in the survey results reported here.

This report summarizes the overall survey results with comparisons across the four countries, and includes sections highlighting particular findings in Japan, Italy, and Brazil.

To access the report, click here: http://kaiserf.am/2B5ojUS

Heating for people with dementia

We worry more often about being cold, rather than too hot, but both are serious for people with dementia. Heat can lead to dehydration, confusion, lethargy, constipation and urine infections that make people with dementia very unwell. Older bodies don’t adjust well to heat and cold, and dementia means the person may not notice, or be unable to tell you that they are too hot or too cold or to do anything about it.

To access the Dementia Centre’s factsheet on heating and dementia, click here: http://bit.ly/2yJDRfB

Legal Discovery and QAPI: A Tale of Two Risks

A shift from quality assessment and assurance (QAA) to quality assurance and performance improvement (QAPI) is becoming a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regulatory reality for providers in the aging services continuum, affecting both home health and nursing centers. This new regulatory focus calls for a renewed discussion about how aging services providers may appropriately invoke privilege from discovery to protect quality improvement "work product" from disclosure in litigation.

The processes and goals of QAPI and litigation discovery create a juxtaposition of two very real but seemingly opposing provider risks: harm to the organization if "problems" are discovered and QAPI information is used against the provider in litigation, versus harm to the organization from failure to act to prevent reoccurring incidents with common root causes.

ECRI Institute's new white paper, "Legal Discovery and QAPI: A Tale of Two Risks," includes a systems thinking approach to help address organizational problems and solutions in relation to the realities in which they exist.

To request this paper, click here: http://bit.ly/2hSmEdu

Much Too Young

What does it mean to be a young adult who becomes a caregiver for an ailing parent? “Much Too Young” is a documentary that is a powerful and unflinching look at four families struggling to cope with an unexpected role reversal, and the complications that come with caring for a parent who has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Too view the documentary, click here: http://bit.ly/2iSHrRB

SEDAP-II -- Canada in the 21st Century: Moving Towards an Older Society

SEDAP was a multi-disciplinary research program funded primarily by SSHRC and centered at McMaster University. It involved 46 academics from fourteen universities in Canada and 3 abroad and ran from Jan 3, 2005 to Apr 1, 2011. The research program included extensive analysis of important and newly available survey data, with international comparisons to allow the Canadian situation to be seen in a broader context.

To access the research papers that came out of SEDAP, click here: http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/sedap

Preventing Aging Unequally

The below report examines how the two global mega-trends of population aging and rising inequalities have been developing and interacting, both within and across generations. Taking a life-course perspective, the report shows how inequalities in education, health, employment and earnings compound, resulting in large differences in lifetime earnings across different groups. It suggests a policy agenda to prevent, mitigate and cope with inequalities along the life course drawing on good practices in OECD countries and emerging economies.

To access the report, click here: http://bit.ly/2i35Ek4