At least four issues have captured the attention of the national audience on the subject of aging and long- term care: that need will increase; that assisted living (AL) has a well-established role in addressing that need; that quality is of concern; and that attempts to improve quality through practice, policy, and research initiatives have been of limited success. That these matters are of national attention is further indicated by the recently-established national Center for Excellence in Assisted Living (CEAL), recommended as an outgrowth of the stakeholder workgroup convened at the request of the U.S. Senate to ensure more consistent quality in AL nationwide. A primary mission of the CEAL is to identify gaps in research and to promote and/or conduct research in areas needed to support quality in AL. The ten organizations that comprise CEAL's Board of Directors represent consumers, providers and professionals; none are research organizations. Conversely, the team of university-based researchers who have been studying the quality of AL for almost a decade, known as the Collaborative Studies of Long-Term Care (CS-LTC), have not had a formal partnership with established consumer, provider or professional organizations. This type of separatism has been a fundamental limitation to quality improvement efforts in AL. In reaction, the proposed project will establish linkages between these organizations, developing a practice/policy-research partnership to promote the conduct of research that is central to the health and well-being of consumers, and to translate knowledge into practice and policy so as to truly improve the quality of life and care in AL. Members of the CEAL and the CS -LTC will form a partnership to work together toward two aims: (1) to develop a nationally-recognized and sustainable model of community-based participatory research (CBPR) in AL; and (2) to promote the health and well-being of AL residents by collecting preliminary data for and developing a research project related to medication management in AL. Thus, the proposed project will develop a partnership focused on the quality of AL, and also serve as a beta test of this model while doing so. Appropriate to the aims of CBPR, medication management was identified by the CEAL as a critical area requiring attention because it has implications for the independent choice of AL residents, the quality of their care, the suitability of the workforce providing that care, the overall affordability of care, and the state policies that already are regulating that care absent this information. Three tangible products will result: an infrastructure for and jointly-endorsed manual of procedures for CBPR in AL, developed through the experience of designing and conducting preliminary studies and developing a research application; research data related to medication management, made usable for providers, policy makers, consumers, and researchers; and a application submitted to the National Institutes of Health to address issues related to medication management that have major practice and policy relevance. ? ? ? ? ?
| Zimmerman, Sheryl; Love, Karen; Sloane, Philip D et al. (2011) Medication administration errors in assisted living: scope, characteristics, and the importance of staff training. J Am Geriatr Soc 59:1060-8 |
