Rockwood has spent his career advancing geriatric medical care. Photo: Dalhousie University
Dr. Kenneth Rockwood, a specialist in frailty and geriatric care and a lifelong Anglican, was appointed to the Order of Canada in June for his work in advancing the field of elder care.
Rockwood is the senior medical director for the Frailty and Elder Care Network at Nova Scotia Health, the province’s health-care authority, and teaches geriatric medicine at Dalhousie. He is best known for his creation of the Clinical Frailty Scale and the Frailty Index—tools which provide a new approach for doctors treating elderly patients— and for his advocacy for policy change in the field of elder care.
Rockwood’s grandfather was the Rev. Gordon Templeton, a passionate evangelical Anglican preacher whose bombastic style Rockwood says has influenced the way he advocates for better geriatric care.
“In me, that preaching gene is fully expressed,” he says.
Rockwood says his faith has taught him to see the face of God in everyone he meets. This, he adds, has guided his compassion for patients he is helping to heal—and for those who are not likely to get better.
Doctors today often focus on identifying and treating patients’ problems one at a time, Rockwood says, but caring for older adults requires a more broad-based approach—something the tools and treatment strategies he developed are meant to address.
Without an approach to elder care tailored to the unique needs of older patients, he fears, Canada’s health-care system will be overburdened as the population continues to age, and some policymakers may draw the wrong conclusions.
“If we don’t do better, we’re going to lose Medicare, that’s my fear,” he says. “People will see a public system that appears not to be working … but that remedy would be exactly wrong.”