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Research Chair, Geriatric Emergency Medicine
Schwartz/Reisman Emergency Medicine Institute
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Dr. Jacques S. Lee was trained in Clinical Epidemiology at McGill University, completed a research fellowship under Dr. Ian Stiell after the wheel was invented but before cell phones.
He is an emergency physician, clinician scientist and the Inaugural Research Chair in Geriatric Emergency Medicine with the Schwartz-Reisman Emergency Medicine Institute (SREMI) based at Mount Sinai Hospital and an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. At SREMI, Dr. Lee’s research is focused on Geriatric Emergency Medicine (GEM) as a means to improve the care of older people who need to use the Emergency Department (ED). The GEM program receives excellent support by Dr. Shelley McLeod, Dr. Bjug Borgundvaag and Dr. Don Melady.
Dr. Lee was recently awarded the Grant Innes Award as the highest rank research abstract at the 2022 Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) scientific meeting.
Delirium is the primary focus of his research
This includes the diagnosis and recognition, prevention and pathophysiology of delirium
Diagnosis and recognition: Dr Lee leads a team that are developing technology including gait trackers and ”serious games” to recognize and prevent delirium in the ED.
Prevention: Dr. Lee recently completed a multicenter stepped-wedge cluster randomized clinical trial that recruited over 800 older people to assess whether a knowledge-to-practice intervention to train ED physicians to perform Point-of-Care Ultrasound Guided regional anesthesia can reduce incident delirium in older people with hip fractures.
Pathophysiology
Dr. Lee was recently awarded a 5 year operating grant to lead a team clinicians and basic scientist to better understand the underlying mechanisms leading to delirium and ultimately develop diagnostic biomarker tests.
In response to COVID-19, Dr. Lee was also recently funded to study social isolation and loneliness due to necessary physical distancing. He is completing a randomized clinical trial of the use of the HOW RU? Intervention developed by Dr. Judith Lowthian at the Bolton Clarke Institute in Melbourne, Australia.