Media Releases

$1 million awarded to Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing led research team to identify safety risks with care in homes

September 21, 2010

TORONTO, ON – Lawrence S. Bloomberg Fac­ul­ty of Nurs­ing pro­fes­sor, Dr. Diane Doran, was award­ed more than $1 mil­lion for research that will help pro­tect the safe­ty of over 900,000 Cana­di­ans who receive health care ser­vices in their homes every day.

The Cana­di­an Patient Safe­ty Insti­tute and its part­ners announced today the suc­cess­ful recip­i­ent of a nation-wide research com­pe­ti­tion draw­ing some of Canada’s lead­ing health­care researchers. The select­ed research team led by Dr. Diane Doran, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, and Dr. Régis Blais, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mon­tre­al, con­sists of 21-mem­bers, which include clin­i­cians, researchers, and pol­i­cy and deci­sion mak­ers that have exper­tise in patient safe­ty and home care ser­vices.

“The exist­ing lit­er­a­ture on the safe­ty of home care in Cana­da is still vague,” says Doran. “This study, which will be the largest pan-Cana­di­an home care safe­ty study of its kind, will attempt to fill in those gaps.”

The Cana­di­an Patient Safe­ty Insti­tute, along with the Cana­di­an Insti­tutes of Health Research, Insti­tutes of Health Ser­vices and Pol­i­cy Research, Aging, Mus­cu­loskele­tal Health and Arthri­tis, and Cir­cu­la­to­ry and Res­pi­ra­to­ry Health; The Change Foun­da­tion; and the Cana­di­an Health Ser­vices Research Foun­da­tion, award­ed the fund­ing to help gen­er­ate new knowl­edge to help improve the safe­ty of home care clients.

“We know that adverse events affect thou­sands of patients every year in Cana­da,” says Hugh MacLeod, CEO, Cana­di­an Patient Safe­ty Insti­tute. “That is why this research in home care is impor­tant to assist with bet­ter patient safe­ty out­comes in the con­tin­u­um of care.”

“For peo­ple like my son David – this research will help keep him safe,” says Ivan­ka Haram­i­na. “My son has been receiv­ing home care for 20 years.”

Results of this research will be released over the next two years. The final report will be released in Jan­u­ary of 2013 with the aim of inform­ing change in pol­i­cy, prac­tice and behav­iour in the home care ser­vice set­ting.

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Con­tact Diane Doran today for an inter­view at: (416) 978‑2866 and diane.doran@utoronto.ca

For inquiries after Sep­tem­ber 21, 2010, please con­tact:

Mar­i­anne Koh
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Offi­cer
Nurs­ing Health Ser­vices Research Unit
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to site
(416) 946‑7055
marianne.koh@utoronto.ca

Tam­my Thorne
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Coor­di­na­tor
Lawrence S. Bloomberg Fac­ul­ty of Nurs­ing
416–946-3657
tammy.thorne@utoronto.ca