Sinai Health leads study of COVID care practices

TORONTO – With funding from Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Sinai Health nurses will lead a Canada-wide study looking at models of care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study will be led by Dr. Lianne Jeffs (pictured), Sinai Health’s research and innovation lead, nurses and health disciplines, and a senior scientist with Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute.

It will explore experiences and contextual factors associated with providing care, as well as changes made to models of care involving nurses and other health disciplines across a variety of clinical areas in acute care hospitals during the pandemic.

In addition to Sinai Health, GTA area hospitals Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University Health Network, Unity Health Toronto, Scarborough Health Network and Trillium Health Partners, as well as British Columbia’s Providence Health Care and researchers from University of Toronto and Athabasca University are also involved in the study.

The study exemplifies the vision of Sinai Health’s Centre for Nursing Excellence announced in December 2021, Canada’s only hospital-based center of its kind.

The Centre has a central focus on nurse-led research and innovation that advances and accelerates the science of care by exploring new approaches to models of care and patient care that improves managing symptoms and complex responses to illness, ensuring patient and staff safety, and enhancing patient experience and outcomes.

Jane Merkley, executive vice president, chief nursing executive and COO of Sinai Health said, “This timely and relevant research study will explore the experiences and factors associated with the models of care implemented across the healthcare landscape, providing evidence and insights that may be useful to inform recovery and rejuvenation efforts aimed at optimizing the healthcare workforce, and patient care experiences and outcomes.”