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Evaluating training program to improve residents’ mobility care in nursing homes

 
Evaluating training program to improve residents’ mobility care in nursing homes

Evaluating training program to improve residents’ mobility care in nursing homes

PRF RESEARCH
Janice Taylor
 
Evaluating training program to improve residents’ mobility care in nursing homes

Grant recipient: Janice Taylor, APAM

Project title: Evaluating a physiotherapist-led training program to improve residents’ mobility care in nursing homes: A feasibility study.

Year awarded: 2013

PRF grant: Seeding grant

Snapshot: Janice’s study aimed to test the feasibility of a complex mobility care improvement intervention in nursing homes. The study took place in a 90-bed residential aged care facility in Melbourne over eight months. The team tested an adaptive and flexible approach to adult learning that included individual and collective reflective practice. It aimed to improve mobility care by improving staff’s interaction and communication with residents as well as staff’s ability to promote residents’ independence during transfers on and off chairs and wheelchairs.

The findings: The PRF study showed the intervention to be feasible; it was practical and well accepted by staff and management. Outcome measures demonstrated the potential for significant improvements in staff behaviour change. A paper reporting the study has been published in ‘Geriatric Nursing’.

Benefits for the profession: This study highlighted the value of transference of the tacit knowledge held by skilled physiotherapists to residential aged care staff. It demonstrated an innovative and feasible means for such knowledge transfer.

The next steps: Janice believes more physiotherapists should be willing and able to act collaboratively as change agents with organisations to improve the quality of mobility care.

About the author/s

Janice Taylor

APAM

Janice Taylor’s early physiotherapy career was varied, interspersed with overseas travel during which she worked as a physiotherapist in London and Scotland. On her return to Australia, Janice was interested in working with older people so completed a part-time Masters in Gerontology at La Trobe University. In 2006 she obtained a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and applied what she learnt to practice, clinical supervision and managerial roles in community based rehabilitation and residential aged care.
In 2009, Janice was awarded a Primary Health Care Research, Evaluation and Development Fellowship. Janice completed her PhD in 2014, entitled 'A Collaborative and Integrated Approach to Resident Mobility.' This program of exploratory qualitative research pointed to the need for improvements in residential aged care staff’s provision of mobility care; staff needed to not only ensure safety, but also to optimise residents’ mobility and apply person-centred approaches during mobility care. The research suggested that collaborative approaches to learning, and culture change would be required to gain and sustain mobility care improvements—didactic training models are less successful in securing staff behaviour change than interactive models and facility cultures based on relationships are more likely to support practice change.