Palliative Care discussion at Award Winners Speaker Series

Nipissing’s Award Winners Speaker Series takes on a serious discussion on January 21, at 7 p.m. in the Harris Learning Library with Dr. Trevor Frise Smith’s talk: Standardized, Comprehensive Assessment - Integration of Care Planning using the interRAI Palliative Care. For home care recipients, it is imperative to have an individual-level information system capable of following the client as they receive health and supportive services from a range of providers. The ability to track individual needs over time and to link this data among different health care providers is especially important for providing community-based, quality end-of-life care. An individual wishing to die at home will require palliative-based home care services involving a range of providers to assist with both ongoing needs and the emergence of new needs (to assist, for example, with pain control, sleep disturbance, appetite and nutrition, spiritual and mental health needs, burden and emotional distress experienced by informal caregivers). In order to facilitate optimal care, it is imperative to have an information system to monitor such needs.

This presentation will introduce participants to the interRAI Palliative Care. Various ways in which this client-level information is exchanged among multidisciplinary care teams and utilized for optimal person-centred care planning will be highlighted.

The presentation is free of charge and all are welcome.

The final instalment of this year’s speaker series takes place onFebruary 25, with Dr. Jeff Dech, discussingSeeing the forest for the trees: ecological modelling of forest landscapes.

The Award Winners Speakers Series was introduced last year in celebration of the university’s 20th anniversary as an independent degree granting institution. The series features Nipissing faculty who have earned a prestigious Research Achievement Award, speaking about their work.

This year, the Award Winners Speakers Series is also connecting to Research Matters, a larger initiative working to cast light on the amazing research that is ongoing at universities throughout Ontario.

Some people think university research is somehow removed from day-to-day life. They couldn’t be more wrong. Ontario university researchers touch every aspect of life through their work.

The Research Matters campaign is a collaboration among Ontario’s 21 universities to find new ways to tell stories about how research is changing lives. Ontario’s universities produce a steady stream of useful and fascinating research that transform how people live, work and play, across the province and around the world.

Through a website, public events, and many other campaign activities, Research Matters aims to provide the public with unprecedented access to Ontario researchers and their work.