Dr. Andrea Iaboni and a new toolkit for LTC to help care of residents during an outbreak

Learn how UHN and Toronto Rehabilitation Institute's Dr. Andrea Iaboni developed an internationally recognized Dementia Isolation Toolkit to help long-term care homes improve their quality of care for older adults

Air Date: October 26, 2022 | Length: 33:56 | Download the transcript

 

 

 

 

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Episode Description

Being in lockdown is hard. The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that. But for long-term care (LTC) homes – where resources were limited, and public health measures failed to take into account the needs of patients with dementia – lockdown was even harder.

 

This is what prompted Dr. Andrea Iaboni, a geriatric psychiatrist and clinical researcher at UHN's Toronto Rehab and Medical Lead of the Specialized Dementia Unit to develop the Dementia Isolation Toolkit (DIT), a comprehensive guide to caring for long-term care patients amid the pandemic. Her motivation behind it? A commitment to delivering compassionate care to patients with dementia, while also upholding government-mandated infection prevention and control measures. Since launching in 2020, the DIT has been downloaded more than 9,000 times across 94 different countries, helping LTC staff care for adults with dementia on a global scale.

About Dr. Andrea Iaboni

Dr. Iaboni is a geriatric psychiatrist and scientist based at KITE, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, University Health Network and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. She is also the Medical Lead of the Specialized Dementia Unit and the Seniors Mental Health Program at UHN. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto before obtaining her doctorate as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. She then returned to medical school at the University of Toronto, before completing her residency in psychiatry and a research fellowship in geriatric psychiatry.

Her research interests include 1) the development, evaluation, and implementation of technology for improving the safety and quality of dementia care, and 2) the impact of treatments for psychiatric illness on mobility in older adults. During the pandemic, Dr.Iaboni led the Dementia Isolation Toolkit project to support safe and compassionate care for people living in long-term care.