UBC Objectives: Family Medicine

By the end of postgraduate training, using a patient-centred approach and appropriate selectivity, a resident, considering the patient's cultural and gender contexts, will be able to...

• Describe the spectrum of institutions care options available

When I was in medical school, if I read "institutional care options" my mind would've reflexively jumped to geriatric residential care options. Although I was aware that there are other members of society who live in institutional care besides seniors, for lack of medical exposure to these other populations, the concept of geriatric living facilities was synonymous to me with institutional care facilities. But the breadth of institutional or residential care options is so much more than that. The website of the Government of British Columbia outlines the residential care options that are in operation in BC as follows:

It is more than likely that over my career I will support patients in finding institutional care facilities across the spectrum of needs for which a live-in facility would be indicated. However, unless I am working with a very niche population, my efforts to help patients find appropriate institutional living accommodation will still be overwhelmingly in the domain of seniors housing, particularly as I enter practice during the baby boomer exodus from older adulthood to geriatric stages of life. A resource I found to be helpful in navigating these senior housing options (across the spectrum and including those that are pre-residential level of care) is Seniors First BC. I encourage anyone who is or anticipates caring for a senior living in BC to check it out. And to find housing for any other domain of need, referring to the bc211 website is a great place to start (I just tried it for various demographics and was able to find options for all of the various residential care needs, woohoo!).