People aged 75 years and over account for 1 in 4 of all hospital admissions. There has been increasing recognition of problems in the care of older people, particularly in hospitals. Evidence suggests that older people judge the care they receive in terms of kindness, empathy, compassion, respectful communication and being seen as a person not just a patient. These are aspects of care to which we refer when we use the term 'relational care'. Healthcare assistants deliver an increasing proportion of direct care to older people, yet their training needs are often overlooked.
This study will determine the acceptability and feasibility of a cluster randomised controlled trial of 'Older People's Shoes' a 2-day training intervention for healthcare assistants caring for older people in hospital. Within this pilot, 2-arm, parallel, cluster randomised controlled trial, healthcare assistants within acute hospital wards are randomised to either the 2-day training intervention or training as usual. Registered nurses deliver 'Older People's Shoes' over 2 days, approximately 1 week apart. It contains three components: experiential learning about ageing, exploration of older people's stories, and customer care. Outcomes will be measured at the level of patient (experience of emotional care and quality of life during their hospital stay), healthcare assistant (empathy and attitudes towards older people), and ward (quality of staff/patient interaction). Semi-structured interviews of a purposive sample of healthcare assistants receiving the intervention, and all trainers delivering the intervention, will be undertaken to gain insights into the experiences of both the intervention and the trial, and its perceived impact on practice.
Few training interventions for care staff have been rigorously tested using randomised designs. This study will establish the viability of a definitive cluster randomised controlled trial of a new training intervention to improve the relational care proided by healthcare assistants working with older people in hospital.
The study was registered as an International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial ( ISRCTN10385799 ) on 29 December 2014.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 August 2018.
All research outputs
#17,729,864
of 25,986,827 outputs
Outputs from Trials
#24
of 45 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#243,108
of 397,724 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Trials
#75
of 102 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,986,827 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 21st percentile – i.e., 21% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 45 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 5.0. This one scored the same or higher as 21 of them.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 397,724 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 30th percentile – i.e., 30% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 102 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 18th percentile – i.e., 18% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
