Who is the CGA for?
CGA is the standard of care for specialized geriatric services for frail seniors. It can be initiated by any member of the interprofessional team who has received appropriate training. Through this structure, all team members function as geriatric assessors, sharing a common set of competencies. Team members contribute additional information using the lens of profession specific geriatric knowledge and skills, and together the team creates a comprehensive plan of care, in collaboration with patients. It is the combination of interprofessional geriatric assessment data, physical assessment findings, analysis and synthesis of the clinical profile and development of a collaborative plan of care and followup plans that constitutes a complete CGA.
What is the CGA meant to do?
The purpose of this competency framework is to describe detailed practice expectations of health professionals participating in the CGA. This Framework will help health professionals to adequately prepare themselves to deliver interprofessional comprehensive geriatric assessments and interventions and work effectively in a specialized geriatrics environment.
This Framework and associated tools, along with clinical mentorship and supervision, will help health professionals to adequately prepare themselves to deliver interprofessional comprehensive geriatric assessments and interventions and work effectively in a specialized geriatrics environment.
What are the benefits of this framework?
Implications and benefits are expected to include:
- Improved quality of assessments
- Improved goal based care planning
- Better tailoring of appropriate interventions
- Appropriate followup and follow through
- Improved consistency in assessment practices across SGS providers
It is anticipated that this framework will support training needs assessment approaches in SGS. This may include the critical appraisal of existing educational/training resources to identify most appropriate methods to support competency development across each domain, or the development of new strategies to support capacity development/education for practitioners related to interprofessional CGA.