CFN’s November webinar focused on a discussion of what frailty is and why it matters for the health and health care of older adults, our target population.
Dr. Melissa K. Andrew first considered what frailty is, what it means to be frail, and how frailty is distinct from chronological age. She then discussed different ways we can think about frailty and consider how frailty impacts older peoples’ health and health care. Finally, she examined different approaches to the measurement of frailty in research and clinical settings, and also consider how social factors are relevant to frailty and its clinical management.
CFN believes that caring for older adults living with frailty is a complex, Canada-wide issue that requires multi-faceted, national strategies and solutions, and our monthly webinars are one way we bring together talented people to focus on this goal.
About our presenter
Melissa K. Andrew, MD, MSc (PH), FRCPC
Dr. Andrew is an Associate Professor of Medicine and a consultant in Geriatric Medicine at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax. She did a Masters of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on a Commonwealth Scholarship and completed her PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at Dalhousie University on the subject of frailty and social vulnerability among older adults. She is Principal Investigator of a team studying frailty and multi-morbidity in relation to dementia as part of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging. She is co-Principal Investigator of the Public Health Agency of Canada/CIHR Serious Outcomes Surveillance (SOS) Network, where she studies how frailty impacts vaccine effectiveness, burden of disease and clinical outcomes of infectious diseases in older adults. She is also engaged in research collaborations studying models of care for frail older adults in Long Term Care.
About our moderator
John Muscedere, MD
Dr. John Muscedere was appointed CFN Scientific Director, effective August 1, 2013. Dr. Muscedere is an intensivist at Kingston General Hospital (KGH), and Associate Professor in the Critical Care Program, Department of Medicine, in the School of Medicine at Queen’s University. He is Research Director of the Critical Care Program at Queen’s, and serves as the Local Health Integrated Network (LHIN) Critical Care Leader for the SouthEast LHIN. Dr. Muscedere is Co-Chair of the Canadian Critical Care Society (CCCS) and the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group (CCCTG) Knowledge Translation Committee. Dr. Muscedere is an accomplished critical care researcher whose primary research interests include ventilator-associated pneumonia, clinical practice guidelines, quality improvement, knowledge translation and venous thromboembolism. He is currently leading the implementation of a Canadian Critical Care Knowledge Translation Network, aC3KTion Net, which seeks to improve the implementation of evidence informed best practices in critical care. As an intensivist, he has first-hand knowledge of caring for the frail elderly, and first-hand knowledge of CFN and its goals, having participated in the Network’s initial proposal for Network Centres of Excellence (NCE) funding, as well as serving as Chair of the CFN Knowledge Translation Committee in its first year.