During 2020 I am leading a COVID related study within care homes. This work is exploring the experiences of relatives who are regular visitors to a resident and due to the enforced UK lockdowns are unable to visit in the usual way. In addtion we are producing a rapid review to develop best practice for continuing communication between care homes, residents and relatives. COVID study
I have research experience on the following key areas: domestic violence, elder abuse and gender based violence, older people and care homes and internationalising curriculum with a focus on healthcare programmes. I am engaged in collaborations with overseas partners in Brazil, South Africa and Malaysia.
I welcome invitations for collaboration from colleagues within the UK and globally from nursing, midwifery and education disciplines.
Until October 2018 I was involved on a Dunhill Medical funded grant called the PEACH study. PEACH is an acronym used to refer to a care home research project taking place in South Nottinghamshire. It stands for ' ProactivE heAlthcare for older people living in Care Homes' (PEACH). In this project we are aiming to understand how a quality improvement collaborative (QIC) can help organise healthcare services delivered to care homes to better reflect the principles of comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA).
Lay person overview:
The ProactivE heAlthcare for older people living in Care Homes (PEACH) study aims to understand how best to implement and organise healthcare services so they align with a process called Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA). This process begins with assessing multiple aspects of an older person's health (physical, mental, functional, social and environmental). An individualised care plan is then produced, and this is delivered by a multidisciplinary team, supervised by a case manager. This is the gold-standard model of how older people who are frail should be managed.
The core of the PEACH study is service development and quality improvement, rather than research. Healthcare teams in four clinical commissioning areas in South Nottinghamshire will meet regularly over a 12 month period to consider how health care services delivered to care homes can better reflect this CGA model. Researchers will use observations, interviews and focus groups to describe how NHS, social care and care home staff work together to implement CGA and how care practices change as a result. Researchers will also collate data routinely gathered by the NHS to produce reliable summaries of care home residents' use of hospitals, GP and ambulance services. These will be used to inform healthcare teams about health service use and to consider whether the quality improvement is influencing this.
The research component of the project involves asking individual residents about quality of life, satisfaction and how people living in care homes use services. To ensure robust interpretation of these data we will randomise the order that the service improvement plans are delivered to care homes. All care home residents will continue to receive routine care throughout the study and all will receive improvements to care specified through the quality improvement programme. Only the order in which homes receiving newer models of care will be randomised. By comparing resident data between periods before and after changes to care, we aim to determine whether these influence individual resident quality of life and satisfaction.