Norwegians among group researching elder-care reform touring Manitoba health facilities

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/05/2023 (898 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A group of Norwegian researchers, health-care providers and managers is touring Manitoba’s personal-care homes and urgent-care centres this week as part of long-term, international research on elder-care reform.

They’re learning about the effect of the provincial government’s 2017 consolidation of ERs and health-care services as they examine how to improve care for older adults.

The group of 20 Norwegians, eight Albertans and 12 Manitobans are in Winnipeg until Friday for an International Network to Enhance Older Adult Care Transitions (iNET) workshop. They’re focusing on how to improve transfers for elderly patients, between their homes to hospital, or from hospitals to long-term care homes, and learn more about programs that aim to keep people living independently longer.

Frode Fadnes Jacobsen, a university professor and research director at the Centre for Care Research in western Norway, and Malcolm Doupe, associate professor in the University of Manitoba’s Rady faculty of Health Sciences, are co-principal investigators of the iNET project.

They acknowledged this visit comes after the pandemic highlighted problems with the long-term care system, but said there are aspects of care both jurisdictions can learn from each other.

Unlike Canada, Norway is known for having one of the world’s highest per capita physician ratios, but that nation, too, is struggling to recruit and retain health professionals in the wake of COVID-19, Jacobsen said. He highlighted Manitoba’s use of multidisciplinary care teams and recognition of cultural differences as examples of positive take-home lessons for the Norwegian team.

“We are slowly starting to see important differences, and not the least, I would say, points of learning. That’s also a major aim, I think, of what we are doing is discovering promising practices. And also, I mean, how context matters. Not everything we can learn is really transferrable, so part of the learning is what could be transferable… across jurisdictions,” Jacobsen said.

Because of the much lower number of doctors per capita, there are “huge differences” in surge capacity between health systems in Canada and Norway, Doupe said, and the ER system in Norway runs on a referral-like basis. Manitoba has roughly 217 doctors per 100,000 residents, one of the lowest per capita rates in Canada. Nationally, Norway has more than double Manitoba’s ratio of doctors, with more than five for every 1,000 residents.

“While we have a relatively high density of nurses and doctors… all the other professions are so important. So the way you work across professions, I think, there are many take-home lessons for us,” Jacobsen said.

On Monday, the group visited long-term care facilities, including Riverview, Deer Lodge and Actionmarguerite (Saint‐Boniface). On Tuesday, they were set to see urgent-care centres and lower-acuity care programs at Concordia and Seven Oaks hospitals. It’s valuable, Doupe said, to see our health system through fresh eyes.

“I was proud to be a Manitoban yesterday,” he said. “The effort that they put into care is incredible. There’s a lot of people that this is not a job for them, this is a calling for them, and you can see that when you go and talk to the sites.”

The group has a visit to Norway planned in November, with the long-term research set to wrap up in June 2026.

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com