Improving older person friendly care practices through identification of barriers and enablers

The most significant challenge for Australia’s health industry has been the rapid rise in chronic disease and longevity. Staff working in hospital medical wards are unprepared for the specialized care requirements of older people who are expected to self-manage multiple complex chronic conditions. Four hospital-acquired complications (urinary tract infection, pneumonia, delirium and pressure injury) in older people are attributed to limited fundamental care while in hospital.
Preparing health service personnel for this escalating patient cohort requires continuous professional development. Prevailing approaches to professional development are didactic, ie. attend in-service sessions and focused on increasing individual, rather than team, knowledge. An emerging focus for professional development is on how to use daily work activities, such as performing a medical procedure or undertaking a pain assessment, as a rich source for learning in teams. ‘Practice pedagogies’ is a term used to describe the techniques that promote practical learning from work activities, such as storytelling, mnemonics, heuristics or tricks of the trade, imitation, case discussions, handover, and work meetings.
This research aims to explore the feasibility of ‘older person friendly practice pedagogies’ and the relationship between the use of practice pedagogies and (a) the frequency of fundamental care provision to hospitalized older people and (b) the frequency of hospital-acquired complications for hospitalized older people. The outcomes of this study are expected to include (a) an older person friendly clinical environment, in which fundamental care is frequently delivered for older patients; and (b) reduced hospital-acquired complications and length of stay.