How to Assess Residents Posture in Bed (HARP-B)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Development of a tool to assess posture in bed of frail older adults, and assessment of its acceptability and validity
IRAS ID
320950
Contact name
Karen Hull
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Care home residents often spend long periods of time in bed, with activities of daily living taking place there e.g. eating meals, watching TV. Care staff are often unaware of the influence that good posture has on the comfort and wellbeing of these residents - i.e. reducing the risk of complications associated with poor posture, such as problems swallowing, pain, pressure sores. Enabling staff to regularly monitor posture might reduce the risk of posture-related complications. An easy-to-use tool to assess residents’ posture when in bed would allow such monitoring by care staff; it would also enable researchers to assess improvements in posture. The aim of this project is to develop and test such a tool.
We will recruit a group of experts - including care home staff, physiotherapists, tissue viability nurses - to help us develop the tool. Focus groups with care home staff and meetings with the experts will enable us to understand what they think the tool should include, and to design its format and content.
We will recruit a care home, its staff and residents to ‘try out’ the new tool and provide feedback (through conversations and interviews) on its ease of use and acceptability. We will amend the tool based on this feedback, in consultation with the experts.
The acceptability and validity of the next version of the tool will be tested in two care homes. Acceptability will be assessed by talking to staff, residents and relatives. To test validity, a member of staff and a physiotherapist will observe each participating resident’s posture - the staff member will complete the tool, whilst the physiotherapist completes their usual assessment. These will be compared to see whether they identify the same postures. Once this work is complete we will finalise the tool based on feedback and data received.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Bradford Leeds Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/YH/0263
Date of REC Opinion
16 Dec 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion