Improving care for older people in community hospitals
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Evaluation of the feasibility and effect of a new tool SPACE - Symptom and Psychosocial Assessment and Communication Evaluation to improve communication and holistic care for older people in community hospitals and during clinical uncertainty
IRAS ID
259513
Contact name
Catherine Evans
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 31 days
Research summary
Why does this research matter?
Community hospitals are important in the care for older people. People’s admission is often unplanned following a marked decline in wellbeing from an often seemingly minor event, like an infection. Clinical uncertainty is common at points of decline. This means we are unsure if a person will recover or continue to decline.What are we trying to do?
We focus on the management of clinical uncertainty. This is a complex area of clinical practice. We want to find ways to improve assessment to understand ‘what matters to the person’ on admission to a community hospital, how we communicate with the patient and family about what to expect, review if we are meeting patient goals, and how we ensure care continues as planned on discharge. There are documents available to support assessment, communication and continuity of care. We want to know if or how well they would work in community hospitals.What will we do?
We will evaluate the feasibility of using a new tool called SPACE - Symptom and Psychosocial Assessment and Communication Evaluation. SPACE comprises documents used by staff with patients and their families. The documents support assessment, communication with patients and families and continuity of care on discharge. We will try out the SPACE documents in two community hospitals to see if it is feasible for staff to use in clinical care, and if it is acceptable and likely beneficial for patients and families. The findings will give a clear idea about how to improve care, the best ways to use the documents in routine care and how to evaluate it for the future. This will enhance our understanding of care in community hospitals and during clinical uncertainty. This will provide a solid foundation for a future study to test how the documents may work nationally.REC name
London - Bromley Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/1836
Date of REC Opinion
12 Dec 2019
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion