Dentistry 2027

As the global population continues to age, older adults require the skills and expertise of many different health care and service providers. Providing comprehensive, collaborative, patient-centered health care and services has been shown to have a variety of benefits for both patients and providers. Additionally, active and applied collaboration between providers (who operate in both the private and public sectors of healthcare) are a vital part of maintaining and improving health. Little is known globally about team-based collaboration between the public and private healthcare sectors and even less is known about older adult’s (age 55+) experiences of it. This pragmatic study is of qualitative descriptive design and framed by the Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative Competency Framework for Advancing Collaboration. To answer the research questions: “how have community-dwelling older adults experienced team-based care across the public and private sectors?” and “what are the expectations community-dwelling older adults have of health care and service providers engaging in team-based care between these sectors?” semi-structured interviews with older adults are done. Codes and themes are discovered via reflexive thematic analysis and themes related to both Canadian and global contexts as well as existing literature. Although each health care system is unique, studying patterns of barriers, resource requirements, and facilitators can help strengthen developments in collaboration and team-based care around the globe and provide insight into providing safer patient care.

Lilly König completed her both her diploma and Bachelor of Science in Dental Hygiene at the University of Manitoba in Canada. She became interested in research and pursued a Master of Science in Rehabilitation Sciences, being the first dental hygienist to do so. In addition to doing research, she works in Indigenous oral public health, is a director on the Manitoba Dental Hygiene Association board and runs an oral health program for low-income older adults. She has co-authored several papers and served as a research assistant on many different research teams.