Improving patient care: Getting people back in motion

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Dr. Aileen Davis
Toronto Western Research Institute

"Physical activity and exercise are critical components of managing arthritis." says Dr. Aileen Davis, Senior Scientist, Health Care and Outcomes Research at the Toronto Western Research Institute. One of the main focuses of her work is to ensure that patients receive the care that they need to get them back to their leisure activities.

Dr. Davis trained as a clinical physiotherapist and worked on the orthopaedic surgery floor where she saw and treated people having joint replacements and knee repairs. She also worked in the outpatient department with people with arthritis. Through this work she became particularly interested in patient outcomes and predictors of those outcomes leading her to pursue a career in research related to this area.

She currently leads with, Dr. Elizabeth Badley, a CIHR team in Models of Care in Arthritis. With their collaborators from BC and Alberta, they are looking at current models of care, ongoing care gaps and factors that facilitate or hinder the development, implementation and sustainability of these models. The overall intent is to develop a framework that health planners and policy-makers can use to develop and implement innovative models that can work across disease severity and the continuum of care.

"The goals overall are to get people to care earlier in the disease trajectory so that we limit or slow progression, particularly in the case of osteoarthritis. I expect a critical part of this will be teaching people to care for their joints on a daily basis. It needs to be part of what we do as part of our daily routines." explains Dr. Davis.

Additionally, she is about to start a new project that was just funded through The Arthritis Society via a CIHR priority announcement partnership with the Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis (IMHA). Through this project they will try to understand why people, despite significant improvements in the year following hip or knee replacement do not increase their activity levels. The project builds from a CIHR grant Dr. Davis led where they found, that despite significant improvements in pain and function in leisure activities and roles, people did not change the frequency of these activities.

"This is concerning" says Dr. Davis, "as exercise, social engagement and physical activity are critical for successful aging. Also, we know physical activity and exercise is a critical component to managing arthritis."