Stephanie Anne Chamberlain

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at University of Alberta

Pandemic-related restrictions in nursing homes have undermined the critical role that family and friend caregivers play in enhancing resident quality of life. Objective We examined how family caregiver access restrictions in nursing homes were implemented and how they impacted the mutual well-being of and relationships between residents and their...

Physical activity program interventions often lack sensitivity to the needs of older immigrant adults. The objective of this systematic realist review is to explain how, why, for whom, and under which circumstances community group-based physical activity programs work for immigrant older adults. The initial program theory was developed using prior...

Background Context (work environment) plays a crucial role in implementing evidence-based best practices within health care settings. Context is multi-faceted and its complex relationship with best practice use by care aides in long-term care (LTC) homes are understudied. This study used an innovative approach to investigate how context elements in...

Background and Objectives Organizational context is thought to influence whether care aides feel empowered, but we lack empirical evidence in the nursing home sector. Our objective was to examine the association of features of nursing homes’ unit organizational context with care aides’ psychological empowerment. Research Design and Methods This cr...

Nursing home (NH) residents are often considered passive recipients of care with a limited role in shaping their experience. This perspective is often reproduced in NH research, which restricts resident participation, thereby upholding ageist views that cause discrimination of older adults living in NH settings. In this article, we propose using Co...

Background There is growing interest in understanding the care needs of lonely people but studies are limited and examine healthcare settings separately. We estimated and compared healthcare trajectories in lonely and not lonely older female and male respondents to a national health survey. Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study of comm...

Background Maximizing quality of life (QoL) is a major goal of care for people with dementia in nursing homes (NHs). Social determinants are critical for residents' QoL. However, similar to the United States and other countries, most Canadian NHs routinely monitor and publicly report quality of care, but not resident QoL and its social determinants...

Family/friend caregivers are essential in the quality of care and life of residents living in congregate care (nursing homes and assisted living). However, the COVID-19 pandemic and related public health measures substantially changed the way family/friend caregivers could be involved in resident care. It also changed the dynamic of the relationshi...

While burnout among health care workers has been well studied, little is known about the extent to which burnout among health care workers impacts the outcomes of their care recipients. To test this, we used a multi-year (2014–2020) survey of care aides working in approximately 90 nursing homes (NHs); the survey focused on work–life measures, inclu...

Background Maximizing quality of life (QoL) is a major goal of care for people with dementia in nursing homes (NHs). Social determinants are critical for residents' QoL. However, similar to the United States and other countries, most Canadian NHs routinely monitor and publicly report quality of care, but not resident QoL and its social determinants...

The association of organizational context with quality of care in nursing homes is not well understood at the clinical microsystem (care unit) level. This cross-sectional study examined the associations of unit-level context with 10 unit-level quality indicators derived from the Minimum Data Set 2.0. Study settings comprised 262 care units within 9...

Background Despite the physical demands and risks inherent to working in long-term care (LTC), little is known about workplace injuries and worker compensation claims in this setting. The purpose of this study was to characterize workplace injuries in LTC and to estimate the association between worker and organizational factors on severe injury. M...

Background: While assisted living (AL) and nursing home (NHs) residents in share vulnerabilities, AL provides fewer staffing resources and services. Research has largely neglected AL, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study compared trends of practice-sensitive, risk-adjusted quality indicators between AL and NHs, and changes in these t...

Introduction Family/friend caregivers play an essential role in promoting the physical and mental health of older adults in need of care – especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and especially in assisted living (AL) homes, were resident care needs are similarly complex as in long-term care homes but fewer staffing resources and services are avail...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic and related public health measures added a new dynamic to the relationship between caregivers and care staff in congregate care settings. While both caregivers and staff play an important role in resident quality of life and care, it is common for conflict to exist between them. These issues were amplified by pandem...

Objectives: Quality of life (QoL) of nursing home (NH) residents is critical, yet understudied, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our objective was to examine whether COVID-19 outbreaks, lack of access to geriatric professionals, and care aide burnout were associated with NH residents' QoL. Design: Cross-sectional study (July to Decembe...

Objectives Our primary objective was to estimate the association between loneliness and unmet healthcare needs and if the association changes when adjusted for demographic and health factors. Our secondary objective was to examine the associations by gender (men, women, gender diverse). Design, setting, participants Retrospective cross-sectional d...

Background Nursing home (NH) residents’ experiences are embedded within their relationships to others. Our objectives were to describe how residents and care partners (family or staff members) jointly construct, discuss, and act on care priorities. Methods We used Action-Project Method, a qualitative method focused on action within social context....

The original Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARiHS) and i-PARiHS frameworks contend that the successful implementation of evidence-based practices is a function of the core elements evidence, context, facilitation, and the capacity of intended recipients to apply research to practice. While applied widely, a number...

While assisted living (AL) communities emphasize resident safety, one barrier to resident safety is a lack of information about AL stakeholders’ safety priorities. As part of a larger research project to create a toolkit to foster resident and family engagement in safety in AL, we created a stakeholder panel that includes 13 AL residents, family me...

Background The number of research publications reporting the use of the Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARIHS) framework and the integrated PARIHS (i-PARIHS) framework has grown steadily. We asked how the last decade of implementation research, predicated on the (i-)PARIHS framework (referring to the PARIHS or i-PAR...

Background and objectives: COVID-19 pandemic visitor restrictions to long-term care facilities have demonstrated that eliminating opportunities for family-resident contact has devastating consequences for residents' quality of life. Our study aimed to understand how public health directives to support family visitations during the pandemic were na...

Objectives To examine the prevalence of coping behaviours during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic among caregivers of Assisted Living (AL) residents and variation in these behaviours by caregivers’ gender and mental health. Design Cross-sectional and longitudinal survey. Setting and Participants Family/friend caregivers of AL resident...

Family or friend caregivers’ concerns about assisted living (AL) residents’ mental health are reflective of poor resident and caregiver mental health. COVID-19-related visiting restrictions increased caregiver concerns, but research on these issues in AL is limited. Using web-based surveys with 673 caregivers of AL residents in Western Canada, we a...

Background Caring for the well-being of older adults is one of the greatest challenges in modern societies. Improving the quality of care and life for older adults and the work lives of their care providers calls for effective knowledge translation of evidence-based best practices. Objective This study’s purpose is to contribute to knowledge trans...

The Action-Project Method (A-PM) is a qualitative research approach used to understand the actions and experiences co-constructed by individuals. We applied the A-PM in a nursing home (NH) setting with the aim to explore how NH residents and the people closest to them describe their priorities for care and act on these priorities. Due to the health...

Background Family and friend caregivers play significant roles in advocating for and ensuring quality health and social care of residents in Assisted Living (AL) homes. However, little is known about how the COVID-19 pandemic and related visitor restrictions affected their health and mental well-being. We examined the prevalence and correlates of a...

The qualitative action-project method (A-PM) was developed in counseling psychology and is useful for studying human actions in various contexts. With this article we provide a guide to A-PM data analysis with a focus on the method’s coding technique. We briefly outline the theory underpinning the method as well as the different phases of data coll...

Background Complex interventions are increasingly applied to healthcare problems. Understanding of post-implementation sustainment, sustainability, and spread of interventions is limited. We examine these phenomena for a complex quality improvement initiative led by care aides in 7 care homes (long-term care homes) in Manitoba, Canada. We report on...

Background Loneliness is a public health concern and its influence on morbidity and mortality are well documented. The association between loneliness and emergency department visits is less clear. Further, while sex and gender-related factors are known to be associated with loneliness and health services use, little research looks at the relationsh...

Background: Supportive living (SL) facilities are intended to provide a residential care setting in a less restrictive and more cost-effective way than nursing homes (NH). SL residents with poor social relationships may be at risk for increased health service use. We describe the demographic and health service use patterns of lonely and socially i...

This presentation provides and overview of a mixed-methods stakeholder engaged study to develop a toolkit to encourage resident and family engagement in the safety of assisted living (AL). This study uses stakeholder-based data and stakeholder engaged processes to adapt existing tools and strategies from other settings to encourage resident and fam...

Maximizing long-term care (LTC) residents' quality of life (QoL) is the primary goal of care. However, most residents have cognitive impairment and care staff time is severely limited, leading to various complexities in measuring QoL. This study developed and assessed the feasibility of an approach to routinely measuring QoL in LTC residents. We us...

Background: The Translating Research in Elder Care (TREC) program is a partnered health services research team that aims to improve the quality of care and quality of life for residents and quality of worklife for staff in nursing homes. This team includes academic researchers, trainees, research staff, citizens (persons living with dementia and f...

Objectives Maximizing quality of life (QoL) is the ultimate goal of long-term dementia care. However, routine QoL measurement is rare in nursing home (NH) and assisted living (AL) facilities. Routine QoL measurement might lead to improvements in resident QoL. Our objective was to assess the feasibility of using DEMQOL-CH, completed by long-term car...

Background: Understanding the needs and values of older people is vital to build responsive policies, services and research agendas in this time of demographic transition. Older peoples' expectations and priorities for ageing, as well as their beliefs regarding challenges facing ageing societies, are multi-faceted and require regular updates as po...

Objective Physical distancing and stay-at-home measures implemented to slow transmission of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) may intensify feelings of loneliness in older adults, especially those living alone. Our aim was to characterise the extent of loneliness during the first wave in a sample of older adults living in the community and asses...

Introduction Dementia is a public health issue and a major risk factor for poor quality of life among older adults. In the absence of a cure, enhancing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of people with dementia is the primary goal of care. Robust measurement of HRQoL is a prerequisite to effective improvement. The DEMQOL suite of instruments is...

This cross-sectional study describes care aides’ characteristics and quality of work life in Western Canadian nursing homes.

Objective Physical distancing and stay-at-home measures implemented to slow transmission of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) may intensify feelings of loneliness in older adults, especially those living alone. Our aim was to characterize the extent of loneliness in a sample of older adults living in the community and assess characteristics asso...

Objectives: To identify socially isolated long-term care residents and to compare their demographic characteristics, functional status, and health conditions to residents who are not isolated. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study using the Resident Assessment Instrument, Minimum Data Set, 2.0 (RAI-MDS) data, from residents in 34 long-...

Objectives: This study examined challenges experienced by long-term care staff in caring for unbefriended residents who are incapacitated and alone. These residents often are estranged from or have no living family or live geographically distant from them and require a public guardian as their surrogate decision-maker. To date, research on unbefri...

Guardianship is a process by which a court delegates to a person or entity the duty and power to make personal, property, or both person and property decisions for another individual based upon a determination that he or she is unable able to make decisions for him‐ or herself. Guardianship has at its foundation the protection and care of individua...

Background: The Translating Research in Elder Care (TREC) program is a longitudinal partnered program of research in Western Canada that aims to improve the quality of care and quality of life for residents and quality of worklife for staff in long-term care settings. This program of research includes researchers, citizens (persons living with dem...

Background: Implementation scientists and practitioners, alike, recognize the importance of sustaining practice change, however post-implementation studies of interventions are rare. This is a protocol for the Sustainment, Sustainability and Spread Study (SSaSSy). The purpose of this study is to contribute to knowledge on the sustainment (sustaine...

Even though social isolation is a significant predictor of poor health and mortality in older adults, very little is known about social isolation in long-term care (LTC) settings. The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence, demographic characteristics, health outcomes, and disease diagnoses of residents without family contact in Alberta L...

The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of residents who are incapacitated and have no surrogate decision maker, known as the “unbefriended” in Alberta long-term care (LTC) homes. Using cross-sectional online survey methods, data were collected from 123 staff (i.e., directors of care/nursing, administrators) from Alberta LTC homes....

Aim: To identify demographic-, individual-, and organizational-level predictors of job satisfaction among managers in residential long-term care (LTC) facilities. Background: Job satisfaction predicts turnover among managers in LTC settings. However, factors affecting job satisfaction among LTC facility managers remain poorly understood. Method...

This chapter describes 10 years of research into organizational context in residential long-term care (LTC) settings. It focuses on this book’s first and third questions: What constitutes context for an event, situation, or phenomenon? And how do contexts change, and what is the role of actors in such processes? Although with respect to change, it...

A Profile of Regulated Nurses Employed in Canadian Long-Term Care Facilities—CORRIGENDUM - Volume 38 Issue 2 - Janet E. Squires, Jennifer Baumbusch, Melissa Demery Varin, Ibo MacDonald, Stephanie Chamberlain, Anne-Marie Boström, Genevieve Thompson, Greta Cummings, Carole A. Estabrooks

RÉSUMÉ Le personnel infirmier autorisé (PIA) et les infirmiers auxiliaires (I aux ) fournissent le volet spécialisé des soins infirmiers dans les centres de soins de longue durée au Canada. Cependant, peu d’études se sont penchées sur cette main-d’œuvre importante. Une enquête a été réalisée chez 309 PIS et 448 I aux provenant de 91 centres pour pe...

Objectives: To assess (1) temporal changes (2008-2015) in nursing home (NH) length of stay (LoS) in 3 Canadian health jurisdictions (Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg), (2) resident admission characteristics associated with LoS, and (3) temporal changes of admission characteristics in each of the 3 jurisdictions. Design: Retrospective cohort study usi...

Objectives: This study explored the impact of being ‘unbefriended’ for residents in Canadian long-term care (LTC) homes. Residents are ‘unbefriended’ if they lack decision-making capacity and family or friends to act as their legal representative. Research suggests that unbefriended individuals may have unmet needs and experience poor quality of ca...

RÉSUMÉ Les aides-soignants non réglementés fournissent la majorité des soins directs dans les résidences pour personnes âgées. Nos travaux précédents ont rapporté un premier profil démographique des aides-soignants de l’ouest du Canada par le programme de recherche Translating Research in Elder Care (TREC; 2007-2022) visant les services de santé ap...

Background: Poor health of health care workers affects quality of care, but research and health data for health care workers are scarce. Our aim was to compare physical/mental health among health care worker groups 1) within nursing homes and pediatric hospitals, 2) between the 2 settings and 3) with the physical/mental health of the Canadian popu...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of homelikeness from the perspective of family members and friends of nursing home residents across different models of nursing homes. Design/methodology/approach This mixed-methods study examined survey data collected from 397 family members and friends of residents living in 23 nursin...

RÉSUMÉ Les personnes âgées dont la capacité de prise de décision est réduite et qui n’ont pas de soutien familial ou d’amis pour les aider à compenser ces déficits sont dites « solitaires » et nécessitent un tuteur public. Le but de cette étude était de recenser les publications avec comités de pairs et la littérature grise afin d’examiner la porté...

Unregulated care providers (health care aides) provide the majority of hands-on care to nursing home residents. The work environment (organizational context) of these direct care providers is increasingly recognized as having an effect on resident outcomes (e.g., pressure ulcers, pain, social engagement). Social engagement is a crucial component of...

Identifying how to enhance the quality of life for older adults living in nursing homes can contribute to transforming health care institutions into person-centered homes, an approach to care that places residents’ relationships, life experiences, abilities, preferences and dignity at the forefront. One component of a federally-funded study of 23 n...

The Advice Seeking Networks in Long Term Care Study used social network analysis to understand the informal advice networks of senior leaders in Canadian long term care (LTC), with the goal of using this knowledge to inform future efforts to more effectively disseminate quality improvement innovations. In this abstract we describe one main componen...

Background: A number of long-term care homes in Nova Scotia, Canada, have been built or redesigned with new models of care with expanded care aide scope of practice and neighborhood-style layouts. Our objective was to examine what physical characteristics (bed size, owner-operator), model of care, and relational (family–staff relationship, perceive...

Longitudinal quality-of-life (QOL) research incorporating multiple perspectives can add to knowledge about how nursing home residents experience QOL, but these methods are seldom used. This study employed interviews and participant observation to conduct multiple-perspective, longitudinal case studies of six residents. Close, reciprocal relationshi...

Purpose: Our study examined care aide characteristics, organizational context, and frequency of dementia-related resident responsive behaviours associated with burnout. Burnout is the experience of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and professional inefficacy. Care aide burnout has implications for turnover, staff health, and quality of care. Desig...

Background Initiatives to accelerate the adoption and implementation of evidence-based practices benefit from an association with influential individuals and organizations. When opinion leaders advocate or adopt a best practice, others adopt too, resulting in diffusion. We sought to identify existing influence throughout Canada’s long-term care sec...

Background Unregulated health care aides provide the majority of direct health care to residents in long term care homes. Lower job satisfaction as reported by care aides is associated with increased turnover of staff. Turnover leads to inferior job performance and negatively impacts quality of care for residents. This study aimed to determine the...

Objective: To systematically review the evidence on factors that influence burnout in health care aides working in nursing homes. Design: Systematic literature review. Data sources: Two search engines (Google and EBSCO Discovery Service) and five databases (MEDLINE, Scopus, CINAHL, PsycINFO and Proquest Dissertations & Theses) through to August 201...

Objectives: Burdensome symptoms and potentially inappropriate care practices are common at the end of life for nursing home residents. Appropriately managing symptoms and limiting aggressive care practices is key to high-quality end-of-life care. Little research is available, however, on the opinions of nursing home care providers about the impact...

High-quality care at the end of life supports freedom from pain and other potentially burdensome symptoms. Lowering symptom burden at the end of life is an urgent and achievable goal in delivering services in nursing home settings. Few published reports describe symptom burden among older adults in nursing homes; none examine links between symptom...