About Nice

This network brings together three of the most important professions who provide social, psychological and physical care to older persons in Canada.

The Network invites university educators from gerontological nursing, geriatric medicine, gerontological social work and other allied professionals concerned with the care of older adults to join in a national partnership with their community counterparts who currently provide the educational component of practice for these programs.

The overarching goal is the dissemination of research and best practices for the care of older adults. Specifically, NICE shares research about evidence-based practice within an interdisciplinary team context across the university – community continuum.

High quality practica, internships and/or residency training programs connect practitioners with the university and vice-versa; they help both the community and the university respond to evolving needs; create the conditions for innovative research and practice, and create knowledge for the development of health and social policy in the care of an aging population.

The practicum/internship platform is used to expand knowledge to user practitioners in the institutions and agencies through a variety of mechanisms, depending on the regional area and its needs. A key user group added to the network is staff development professionals from each of the three professions who will help plan how the dissemination of information will occur, e.g. workshops, seminars, on-line seminars, talks, summer institutes, web-journals; on-line gerontology tool kits; etc. There will be several national conferences for the sharing of best practices amongst the educator professionals and their user groups and several national policy colloquia with policy makers who will have to respond to the to the 'age wave'.

Introduction

The National Initiative for the Care of the Elderly (NICE) network is a national network of researchers and practitioners involved in the care of older adults through medicine, nursing social work and other allied health professional concerned with the care of older adults.

NICE is proposed within a context of three central issues affecting the care of Canada’s present and future older population. First, there has been unprecedented growth in the number and proportion of elderly persons in Canada, a trend which is expected to continue in the coming decades. Health Canada, for example, reports that seniors (those adults 65 years of age, or more) are Canada's fastest growing population group. They expect the senior population to grow to approximately 6.7 million by the year 2021, and grow to 9.2 million by 2041, then accounting for nearly one in four Canadians.

In fact, they note that the growth of the senior population will "account for close to half of the growth of the overall Canadian population in the next four decades.” Further, the fastest growth is occurring among those adults aged 85 and over. While Canada, and other industrialized countries, will have time to prepare for this impending growth in the senior population, it is expected that the Canadian population will age more rapidly as the "baby boomer" (those born between 1946 and 1965) cohort ages.

Criteria

• Furthers the well-being of the aging population of Canada
• Transfers knowledge to and from the university and the community on an interdisciplinary and national level
• Involves policy makers in the area of aging
• Involves the best academic researchers in three disciplines
• Involves students in three disciplines at the undergraduate and graduate levels
• Is international with the Hartford Foundation
• Links professional associations

Why The Network?

1. There had been unprecedented growth in the number and proportion of the elderly for whom complex care requires the integrated skills of a number of professions. Within the next 10 years, the number of older people will not only challenge the traditional notions of ‘old age’ they will test the capacity of our nation’s health and social services. The demographic imperative has been more than documented but essentially ignored by the practice professions who are the groups most likely to deal with the age wave. The need has never been greater than now for the transfer of knowledge about evidence-based practice and best practices in the community for competent, cost-effective practice.
2. The professional workforce of nurses, social workers, and doctors have two problems: inadequate training and inadequate supply. While there is little data in Canada, the concern is evident in the United States. In the last several years, the Hartford Foundation alone, poured $35.5 dollars into the education of geriatric social workers, $36 million into the education of geriatric nurses and $122 million into the training of geriatricians. With less resources, a network of interdisciplinary professional researchers and educators working with community partners, is a cost saving way to help re-direct professional attention to the geriatric aspects of their respective professions, to help identify best practices, to foster gerontological leadership; to develop and strengthen existing teams and improve the knowledge base for agency based practitioners.
3. The overwhelming evidence is that the more complex situations of older people benefit more from the care delivered by an interdisciplinary team. The network creates team conditions by bringing together the three main professions into a network that typically does not share information across professions or provide a united effort in communicating and listening to institutions and community agencies. NICE differs from any other association or network in Canada because it represents professionals who conduct applied research about the care of older people, it provides an interdisciplinary environment for addressing these care issues that is not present in lone professional associations or in the main interdisciplinary associations typically divided by discipline and profession.