The Geriatrics, Inter-Professional
Practice, and Inter-Organizational
Collaboration (GiiC) Initiative
Dr. David Ryan, GiiC Project Director and Director of Education, Regional Geriatric Program of Toronto
Ken Wong, GiiC Resource Consultant, Regional Geriatric Program of Toronto
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Providing care to frail seniors requires competencies in three
areas: geriatrics, inter-professional practice, and interorganizational collaboration (GiiC). Geriatrics because the clinical
presentations of frail seniors are unique and complex; interprofessional practice because this complexity is beyond the scope
of any single healthcare provider; and inter-organizational
collaboration because the management of frail seniors requires the
sharing of care across many organizational boundaries from
primary and community-based care to emergency and hospitalbased services.
The Regional Geriatric Programs (RGPs) of Ontario, the Centre for
Education and Research in Aging and Health (CERAH) in Thunder
Bay, and the North East Specialized Geriatric Services (SGS) in
Sudbury have been given an opportunity to work together with
Family Health Teams (FHTs) and Community Health Centres (CHCs)
to develop our capacity to provide effective inter-professional and
collaborative shared care for seniors across the province of
Ontario. We call this the GiiC initiative.
Through this initiative, a team of GiiC consultants from the RGPs,
CERAH, and the North East SGS have developed a GiiC knowledgeto-practice toolkit. In a series of regional workshops, the
consultants will, in turn, train staff nominated by their Family
Health Team or Community Health Centre in the use of the toolkit.
The GiiC facilitators within their teams will be coached and
supported by the regional GiiC consultants, as they find ways to
bring GiiC knowledge into their organizations’ practices. We
anticipate training as many as 200 facilitators and, through this,
enhancing effective shared care for seniors across Ontario.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Geriatrics
Inter-Professional
Inter-Organizational
• advance directives
• capacity assessment
• caregiver support
• delirium
• dementia screening
• depression
• driving capacity
• end-of-life care
• falls
• incontinence
• oral health
• osteoporosis
• pain
• polypharmacy
• preventative screening
• achieving high performance
• decision making and
communications
• inter-professional ethics
• formal and informal
influence processes
• leadership
• managing task and process
needs
• patients and families as
team players
• team culture and
development
• understanding behavioural
styles
• anticipating expectancy
dynamics
• assessing boundary
functions
• ethics in network
environments
• organizational culture
• recognizing teams within
teams
• understanding network
analyses
THE GiiC NETWORK
Steering Committee
Project Director/Project Manager
GiiC Resource Consultants
The RGPs of Ontario, CERAH, and the North East SGS are
grateful to the Health Force Ontario branch of the Ministry of
Health and Long Term Care for funding this initiative under the
auspices of their Interprofessional Blueprint for Care, to the
project’s evaluation team from the Arthritis Community Research
and Education Unit, and to the Hamilton Family Health Team and
the Anne Johnston Health Station, whose directors sit on the
GiiC initiative steering committee.
RGP of
RGP of RGP of RGP of RGP of
CERAH
North East SGS
Hamilton Kingston London Ottawa Toronto Thunder Bay
Sudbury
Network of GiiC Facilitators within FHTs and CHCs
across the Province of Ontario