Showing posts with label development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label development. Show all posts

Thursday, 21 January 2016

HS&DR - 08/1819/214: The Impact of Enhancing the Effectiveness of Interdisciplinary Working



Why are we asking for your actionable tools?
A project is being carried out at Sheffield Hallam University in conjunction with colleagues from CLAHRC YH, and is funded by NHS England to develop an online repository for actionable tools for active dissemination and implementation of research findings into practice. They are currently working with knowledge mobilisation experts linked to CLAHRC YH, NHS England,  practitioners and those responsible for professional development to derive a working definition of 'actionable tools', and are seeking out research outputs which could potentially be actionable tools. They will consult a governance team with end-user representation, to determine which candidate tools fulfil the criteria to be considered 'actionable' and hence can be included on the online repository.
The RAT Group have put forward some NIHR funded research outputs to be included.:

This paper is firmly directed at application of the principles:
The ten principles of good interdisciplinary team practice.

The following is a resource that has been designed and used as an actionable tool:
InterdisciplinaryManagement Tool - Workbook (this is appendix #2 on the project page).

We have published an evaluation of the implementation of the tool:

This project:
Secondary analysis and literature review of community rehabilitation and intermediate care: an information resource
Has a full report in the NIHR journals library.

Here are the chapters:
Each of these could provide evidence to inform actions for commissioners and service providers.

Notably, the NHS Benchmarking Network, National Audit of Intermediate Care (NAIC) (currently in its 5th year) has been using some of the recommendations from Objective 4 (especially the Therapy Outcome Measures), and automated data collection methods, which were pioneered as a result of continuation of this work.

Wednesday, 6 January 2016

Adopt a Care Home in the News



The Adopt a Care Home scheme was featured on Channel 4 News just before Christmas.



The Adopt a Care Home scheme links care homes with local schools. The Adopt a Care Home scheme was set up to enable people with dementia to become more involved in their local community, to feel better about themselves and to teach children about dementia. Laura Di Bona and Sheila Kennedy  from the University of Sheffield carried out an evaluation of the pilot of  the Adopt a Care Home scheme. One care home and one school took part in the pilot and its evaluation. Forty-one children aged nine or ten were taught about dementia in school. Sixteen of them went on visits to their local care home to meet people with dementia. The children and people with dementia made “Lifestory” booklets together, in which they shared information about themselves and their lives.

The findings of the evaluation suggested the Adopt a Care Home scheme increased dementia awareness in children.  The children knew very little about dementia at the beginning but knew more by the end of the scheme. The findings also suggested that participating in the Adopt a Care Home scheme was enjoyable for many of the people with dementia . None were upset by the experience. The school and care home felt the scheme went well and are carrying on with it.

Channel 4 news presenter Christine Oldfield interviewed Laura Di Bona about her evaluation and collaborators from Sheffield City Council, Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Trust and Prince Edward Primary School about the scheme. The Channel 4 news feature showcased the scheme in action with children talking to people with dementia in a care home and then discussing their learning about dementia back in the classroom.

Anyone interested in finding out more about the scheme, its evaluation and future plans should contact Laura Di Bona: l.dibona@sheffield.ac.uk
For further information about the Adopt a Care Home scheme and to read a copy of the Adopt a Care Home evaluation report please visit this link.


To view the Channel 4 News feature please go to the channel 4 news link here. Alternatively you can visit YouTube.

Tuesday, 24 November 2015

Place based systems of care

Have you heard of these?
Are you interested in how place based systems of care could improve health and health care?

A recent King's Fund report entitled "Place-based systems of care: A way forward for NHS and England" discusses just this.

The report can be downloaded here.

Tuesday, 17 November 2015

EnComPaSS at Hospice UK National conference


Dr Deborah Fitzsimmons

The TaCT EnComPaSS project made a strong impact at the Hospice UK national conference in Liverpool this week.

Dr Sam Kyeremateng (Medical Director) and Judith Park (Deputy CEO) from St Luke’s Hospice, Sheffield were invited by Hospice UK to present this work at the opening session of their national conference at the Convention Centre, Liverpool. A poster describing how the clinical staff will use the technology to deliver care, and how this is being evaluated by TaCT researchers was also presented by Dr Deborah Fitzsimmons.


Dr Sam Kyeremateng (Medical Director)
and Judith Park (Deputy CEO),
St Luke’s Hospice, Sheffield
TaCT researchers are working with St Luke’s Hospice, Sheffield on the implementation of a highly innovative approach to delivering palliative care in the community. Currently, hospice-employed Band 5 nurses can only work in the community under on-site supervision by experienced palliative nurses. This significantly restricts the capacity of the service. During the initial implementation phase, the technology-enabled Enhanced Community Palliative Support Service (EnComPaSS) service model will be deployed and evaluated by CLAHRC-YH to determine the impact on service provision of enabling Band 5 nurses to work independently in the community. Supported by an award of £250,000 from the NHS Nursing Technology Fund, the first phase of the implementation will be completed by March 2016.


Wednesday, 7 October 2015

Brand New TaCT Newsletter

The second issue of the TaCT newsletter is now available.

TaCT is a theme of the National Institute for Health Research, Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care Yorkshire and Humber (NIHR CLAHRC YH).


Access the newsletter here.

The aim of the TaCT theme is to harness new technologies to support health and social care in the community and to improve the quality of life and in-dependence of the growing number of people living with long-term conditions and disability. Our team comprises researchers from universities, the NHS and care organisations across Yorkshire and Humber and together we are carrying out projects re-searching, developing, evaluating and implementing innovative technology supported interventions. Our aim with this newsletter is to keep you up to date with progress in the theme and to give a taster of the projects we are involved with.

More information about the theme can be found on our website
http://clahrc-yh.nihr.ac.uk/our-themes/telehealth-and-care-technologies

Our Theme Lead is Professor Mark Hawley, please contact Dr Jack Parker (Theme Manager) if you have any queries regarding the newsletter or the Theme (Jack.parker@sheffield.ac.uk).

Tuesday, 6 October 2015

CATCH researchers take their work to the community in Vancouver


Professor Arlene Astell discusses evaluation
concepts with the AAL-WELL team.

Myself (Tim Gomersall) and Professor Arlene Astell returned this week from a successful final meeting of the steering group for the AAL-WELL study in Vancouver, Canada. AAL-WELL is a study about the potential for the new class of so-called ‘ambient assisted living’ (AAL) systems to support older people to maintain everyday activities and meaningful social roles, and our group brings together software engineers, psychologists, occupational therapists, and social scientists to examine the issues from multiple perspectives.

In the meeting, we discussed several key issues about AAL that have yet to be addressed in the research literature. Our colleagues from the Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) spoke about the activities and social roles older people want to master in everyday life, the technologists from Toronto brought their insights on user-centred design along, and the Vancouver-based social scientists and modellers discussed the ethical issues around AAL. For our own part, Professor Astell and I led a discussion about current controversies in evaluation theories and methods for AAL. Evaluation approaches for these technologies are in their infancy, but it is crucial to have a sound basis for understanding their value if we are to gain the promised benefits of the AAL revolution – and we certainly had some lively discussions on how we each understood evaluation from our varied research perspectives!

We didn’t just talk among ourselves while we were in Vancouver. On the fourth day of the meeting, we led a knowledge cafĂ© in which we presented our research ideas to a residential community of older adults living just outside the city boundaries. This was an especially valuable part of the experience – not only did we get a chance to take some of our ideas out into the wider world, we also got some interesting feedback on them from a community group. In fact, a lot of our assumptions were upended by their comments – for example, it is often said that AAL will help people to live independently, but the residents spoke about the concerns they would have about becoming dependent on technologies, and the problems this would cause if the technologies broke down or became unreliable. If ever there was a clear illustration of how important it is to include the views of older adults when considering how best to support them, this was it.

We were privileged to have met with such great colleagues and participants in this beautiful, rainy, lively city – our discussions framed by views over the Pacific and the sweeping forests and mountainsides of British Columbia. And now, we can’t wait to tell you more about our next research outputs from the study. Watch this space…