COVID-19

Our response to COVID-19

Our strength, our resilience

Letter from Josette-Renée Landry, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer

The Institut du Savoir Montfort (ISM) has closely followed the rapid evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and has been at the forefront. To accomplish this, the institute relied on a strong team to ensure the development and implementation of an emergency plan and incident management structure. The ISM also sat on numerous committees at the Montfort Hospital to align the decisions and actions of our two organizations.

The ISM is fortunate to have within its ranks a dedicated team that cares about the health of our community. Always ready to offer their help and expertise, our teams quickly re-tooled themselves in the face of this unprecedented situation and spared no effort to make their contribution. Our staff members and researchers joined forces with our community and partners to carry out joint initiatives that offered innovative and sustainable solutions.

At the ISM, we continue to reinvent ourselves so that we can continue to offer you outstanding services. Thus, many of our training sessions and events will take place virtually. I invite you to attend the 19th edition of the Journées Montfort, a pan-Canadian Francophone medical congress, on April 15 and 16, 2021.

In the meantime, I invite you to learn more about some of our initiatives below.

Josette-Renée Landry, Ph. D.

Consult the 2019-2020 annual report

Three entities, one common vision

2020, a year like no other!

The pandemic is without a doubt one of the most difficult challenges we have collectively faced. Despite this, Montfort teams have worked tirelessly over the past few months to set up two COVID-19 screening and care clinics and a small community screening point to serve the Ottawa population.

The year 2020 will long be remembered: yes, it has been a difficult year, filled with uncertainty, but it has also been filled with beautiful moments, small pleasures and smiles. The pandemic has brought out the best in people: mutual aid, innovation and respect.

Read the article on Journal Montfort (French only)

Our initiatives

Clinical trials on COVID-19

With the expertise of Christine-Nadia Compas and Mélodie Potvin, Clinical Research Coordinators, clinical researcher members at ISM are involved in clinical trials on COVID-19.
Antithrombotic Therapy to Ameliorate Complications of COVID-19

A prospective, open-label, multicentre, Bayesian adaptive randomized clinical trial to establish whether therapeutic-dose parenteral anticoagulation improves outcomes for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 (e.g., reduces intubation or mortality).

Site Principal Investigator (PI): Marc Carrier, M.D., ISM Researcher Member

Site Sub-Investigator (Sub-I): James Zhang, M.D.

Main Study Coordinator at ISM: Mélodie Potvin

Sponsor: University of Manitoba

Study Principal Investigators: Ryan Zarychanski, M.D., Ewan Goligher, M.D., and Patrick Lawler, M.D.
Reference
Treatments for COVID-19: Canadian Arm of the SOLIDARITY Trial (CATCO)

This study is an adaptive, randomized, open-label, controlled clinical trial, in collaboration with countries around the world through the World Health Organization.

Primary Outcome Measures : Efficacy of Interventions as assessed by all-cause mortality [Time Frame: 29 days ]. All-cause mortality, assessed at hospital discharge.

This study is intended to allow for multiple adaptations, including: i) the primary endpoint at the first interim analysis, based on performance characteristics, both in its characteristics and its timepoint, with adapted sample size calculations performed for the new primary endpoints; ii) Intervention arm, with emerging data from both internal and external to the trial, with arms being dropped or added based on pre-specified stopping rules in conjunction with the DSMB.

Site Principal Investigator (PI): Nicolas Chagnon, M.D.

Site Sub-Investigator (Sub-I): Sarah Mansour, M.D.

Main Study Coordinator at ISM: Christine-Nadia Compas

Sponsor: SunnyBrook Health Sciences Centre

Study Principal Investigators in Canada: Srinivas Murphy, M.D., and Robert Fowler, M.D., from Sunnybrook Research Institute
Reference
N95 vs MM: Medical Masks vs N95 Respirators for COVID-19

A randomized controlled trial in which health care workers (HCWs) will be randomized to either medical masks or N95 respirators when providing medical care to patients with COVID-19. This Canadian multi-centre randomized controlled trial will assess whether medical masks are non-inferior to N95 respirators when health care workers provide care involving non-aerosol generating procedures. HCWs will be randomized to either use of a medical mask or to a fit-tested N95 respirator when providing care for patients with febrile respiratory illness. The primary outcome is laboratory confirmed COVID-19 among HCWs participants.

Primary Outcome Measures: RT-PCR confirmed COVID-19 infection [Time Frame: 6 months].

Number of participants with RT-PCR confirmed COVID-19 infection.

Site Principal Investigator (PI): Sarah Mansour, M.D.

Site Sub-Investigator (Sub-I): Andy Pan, M.D.

Main Study Coordinator at ISM: Christine-Nadia Compas

Sponsor: McMaster University

Study Principal Investigator: Mark Loeb, M.D., McMaster University
Reference
The housekeeping team at the heart of a research project

“Amongst the health care workers at Hôpital Montfort, the housekeeping staff was the first to contract VIDOC-19. “This finding led Marie-Hélène Chomienne, M.D., and several collaborators to set up a pilot project at Hôpital Montfort that examines how housekeeping workers are coping with the VIDOC-19 pandemic and how they experience it on a daily basis.

The research team includes Marie-Hélène Chomienne, M.D., researcher at the ISM and family physician; Jean Grenier, M.D., researcher at the ISM and Kathleen Lalande, M.D., from the health psychology department, and Martin Lauzier, Ph.D., researcher at the ISM and who holds a research chair in occupational psychology at the ISM.
Read the article in Journal Montfort
Artificial intelligence(AI) to detect COVID-19

El Mostafa Bouattane, M.D., member researcher at the ISM and director of the Department of Performance, Decision Support and Privacy at the Montfort Hospital, is directly contributing to a research project to use artificial intelligence in the detection of COVID-19.

Merci à nos collaborateurs:
Nothing is impossible for the duo in the simulation laboratory.

During the simulation instructor training on August 20, Eric Tassé and Gonzalo Blanco, medical simulation and application management technicians, faced a great challenge as they had to train four new simulation instructors in the midst of a pandemic. Since our rooms were too small to respect the recommended physical distance, they decided to conduct the training in three different rooms.
Read the article in Journal Montfort
Telesupervision and telemedicine, the residents' curricula is adapting to the new reality.

The Institut du Savoir Montfort has developed with the Francophone Affairs of the University of Ottawa, a curriculum for the training of preceptors in tele-supervision and a curriculum for the training of preceptors for distance education. With the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ottawa, the Institut du Savoir Montfort has developed a curriculum for the training of medical students and residents in telemedicine.

Lyne Pitre, M.D., CCFP, FCFP, MEdEd, O.Ont, Director of Medical Education
Internships and distance learning in Montfort, a successful challenge

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the team coordinating the placements of health care professionals (excluding those in medicine) has chosen to move to the virtual world (e.g., virtual administrative placements and virtual referrals). In collaboration with Montfort Human Resources, the team also trained more than 70 students as Licensed Practical Nurses, Beneficiary Attendants, Orderlies and General Helpers to contribute to the massive recruitment effort. These students were in the following programs: Nursing, Practical Nursing, Respiratory Therapy and Personal Support Workers among others. A member of the team also made N95 mask adjustments for medical students and residents as well as Montfort employees.

Sophie Ziai, Ph.D., Professional Education Coordinator and Claude Gaudert, I.A., Nursing Education Coordinator
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

The supply of PPE was a major issue at the beginning of the pandemic. The Montfort Knowledge Institute and Bernard Leduc, M.D., President and CEO of the Montfort Hospital, quickly established a collaboration with Hanan Anis, M.D., a researcher at the University of Ottawa, for reusable visors. They developed, then tested, a prototype and after a few trials, reusable visors were worn on the floors, thus reducing stress on the supply.

Thanks to Éric Tassé, Gonzalo Blanco, Daniel Bédard, Christine-Nadia Compas and Marie-Andrée Imbeault, Ph.D., for their participation in the project.

Merci à nos collaborateurs:
ISM staff committed to the cause

Sophie Audet, a clinical educator at the ISM, had the brilliant idea of sewing protective caps for nurses. She turned to the “Buy Nothing” Facebook page in her neighbourhood after seeing that the protective caps could not be worn by all staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, to avoid a shortage of materials.

Read the article in Journal Montfort
Decontamination of N95 masks

The supply of PPE was quite a challenge in the first wave, so reusable options had to be explored, as well as decontamination. Ursula Dika, M.D., M.Sc., Research Coordinator, worked mainly on the N95 decontamination file.
Preventing infections one video at a time

To assist the infection control group, Peter McPartland, audio-visual technician, has produced videos on several topics related to COVID-19 and protective measures.
Scientific monitoring in support of decisions

The team composed of Daniel, Céline, Ursula, Steve and Véronique has acquired an enormous amount of information in such a short period of time and has orchestrated the sharing of summary fact sheets from the literature. They have enabled many professionals to base their work on best practices and what is known from scientific evidence!

Céline Delluc, M.D., M.Sc., Daniel Bédard, M.Sc., Ursula Dika, M.D., M. Sc., Steve Levesque, M.Sc., PHRAM, research coordinators, and Véronique Synnett, librarian.