João Tavares has been an integrated researcher of the AgeingC research group, at CINTESIS, at the University of Aveiro, since 2020, after several years as a collaborator in this Unit. At the age of 41, he has accumulated vast experience in clinical practice as a nurse, which he has combined with research activity and teaching, always working in the field of ageing and care for the elderly.
He was born and raised in Sever do Vouga, in Rua da Aldeia, “surrounded by old people”, although he did not have a close relationship with his own grandparents. This “romantic and affective childhood memory” ended up having a decisive influence on the professional path he decided to follow. “For me, it was natural and intrinsic to be with older people”, he stresses.
He graduated in Nursing from the Dr. Ângelo da Fonseca Nursing School in Coimbra in 2004. In the early years, he worked as a nurse in the Differentiated Nursing Care Team, replacing colleagues on long-term sick leave in various services at the Hospitals of the University of Coimbra (HUC). Later, he worked in the Geriatrics Consultation of the HUC, and in the Personalized Health Unit of Alfarelos.
His calling to care for the elderly was consolidated with professional experience and gained a new perspective with the continuation of studies and the deepening of research at the academic level. In 2008, he completed a Master’s degree in Gerontology at the University of Aveiro with a paper on the National Network of Continuing Care. He taught at the Nursing School of Coimbra (guiding students in Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly) and at the School of Education of Coimbra, in the course of Social Gerontology.
He completed his Ph.D. in Gerontology and Geriatrics at the University of Porto/University of Aveiro in 2014. “It was a means to understand the state of care for the elderly, namely at the hospital level, what was not being done and what had to be done”, he recalls. He did an internship in the USA, with a Gerontological Nurse Practitioner, under the Nurses Improving Care for Healthsystems Elders (NICHE) program, having worked with world reference researchers in Geriatric Nursing.
After his Ph.D., he proceeded with a project at the Hospitals of the University of Coimbra to identify elderly people at risk in the Emergency Department, having carried out work on the validation and application of instruments in that same context. This work was also the basis of the public exams he took to obtain the title of Specialist in Nursing.
As a researcher, one of his lines of research concerns the development of skills in Geronto-Geriatric Nursing, both for the graduate and advanced levels. “In Portugal, there is no specialty of Geriatrics, neither in the medical field nor in the Nursing field, which, in my perspective, is a huge gap. This work aims to launch a discussion on the urgent need to move towards differentiated training in this area”, he says.
For João Tavares, “Today it makes no sense that hospitals, health contexts, and social contexts, which have mostly older people, do not promote quality care or, at least, informed by the best evidence”.
Although ageing is studied at an academic level, the CINTESIS researcher considers that, about 20 years after he started working in the area, “advances are very slow, very limited. The measures that effectively respond to this group are scarce, with a bit of a show off”, he confesses, denoting some “disenchantment”.
It is true that “some things have changed”, he says, but “we still have a way to go and, for that, it is essential to strengthening the knowledge and skills of professionals working in this area”.
Another line of research is the loneliness and social isolation of the elderly, with the validation of instruments, such as the ALONE scale. João Tavares has also investigated variables of interaction with social media and issues related to pets. The LGTBQIA+ population over 50 years old is another line of research. Recently, he participated in the Integr@tención II project, which aimed to use technology to help older people to respond to real needs.
João Tavares has published several papers in national and international journals with scientific peer review, is also co-author of books dedicated to caregiver and care of the elderly, a reviewer of scientific journals, and a member of the AGE Platform Europe in the Taskforce on dignified Ageing and AGE on Heath Ageing. He was awarded the Research Prize of the Order of Nurses – Regional Section of the Center in 2018.
He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the School of Health of the University of Aveiro (ESSUA) and is part of the College of Medical-Surgical Specialty of the Order of Nurses. He promises to continue to fight, on a personal, professional, and academic level for the development of Geronto-Geriatric Nursing.
What is your 1-Year Ambition?
I would like the ALONE project to be completed. ALONE is a clinical scale for assessing the severity of loneliness, which aims to help clinical decision-making by professionals and, particularly in cases of severe loneliness, allows referral. It is a tool that can be easily incorporated into a clinical interview in order to identify this group, either in the community or in Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly. At the moment, we are only focusing on people in the community. I hope that this will lead to results in the medium term.
What is your 10-Year Ambition?
In the mid to long term, I see myself working on the issues of frailty, which is a very cross-cutting area and where I have already been researching. I would also like, in the future, to dedicate myself to working on technology issues and to continue with skills issues, even from a perspective of political lobbying and civic intervention. I see myself having a more active voice. We need to move towards more differentiated models for this population group. A quick thought: there are State departments for everything, but there is not one that represents 24% of the Portuguese population, which are people over 65! As long as this gap exists, promoting healthy ageing is more of an option than an obligation.
How is Life Beyond Teaching, Clinical Practice and Research?
As Agustina Bessa-Luís used to say, I was born old and I will die a child. One of my hobbies is music. I love music and use it as a pedagogical intervention with my students. I go to concerts a lot. I am an average reader. I do sports (crossfit) even for mental health reasons. I like to build bridges between seemingly different areas. For example, reading Valter Hugo Mãe’s “The Machine for Making Spaniards” gave me new research questions.
Like Simone de Beauvoir, I think that “The law of life is to change; it is inertia that is synonymous with growing old”.
