The Challenges of Research in the Care Home Setting

Annabelle Long is a Chartered Physiotherapist working as a Research Assistant at the University of Nottingham on a Dunhill Medical Trust funded PEACH study, which considers the role of Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment in UK care homes. She has a developing research interest in wellbeing for people with dementia in community environments. In this blog she outlines the potential challenges and solutions in doing research at the health and social care interface.

As practitioners and researchers in care of older people, it is important for us to be continually working to include more dependent groups in research. The reason for doing so is to ensure that the evidence base can reliably be applied to the patients we see in everyday practice. However involving older people with dependency in research can be challenging because cognitive and physical impairments can make standard procedures for recruitment and data collection difficult.

Selfie with a centenarian!

Esther Clift is a Consultant Practitioner Trainee in Frailty, and Vice Chair of the BGS nurses and AHP Council. She is undertaking a Doctorate in Clinical Practice at Southampton University on the uptake of exercise by older people. She was inspired by an interview with Dr Frankland on the Today Programme, and went to ask him about his own use of exercise.

‘I just think he should have told me, I’m not stupid!’ – Dr AW Frankland reflects on his introduction to Strength and Balance exercises.

Dr AW Frankland was born the year the Titanic sank, and started medical school in Oxford when Stanley Baldwin was Prime Minister. He was supervised by Sir Alexander Fleming at St Marys and is described as the ‘grandfather of allergy research’. His daily hour long supervisions with Fleming never included discussing patients – ‘he was a pure scientist, who wanted to talk about science.’

Can Irish set dancing benefit your health?

Joanne Shanahan is a Chartered Physiotherapist and Irish set dancing teacher. She completed her PhD in the University of Limerick. Joanne was the lead co-author of “Set dancing for people with Parkinson’s disease: an information resource for Irish set dancing teachers”. In this blog Joanne discusses her research.

Set dancing is an Irish cultural and social dance form. It involves dancing in a group of eight (sometimes four) people and is accompanied by the lively distinct beat of Irish dance music. Today set dancing is enjoyed by people worldwide with classes, workshops and ceilis organised all year round. Until recently the health benefits of set dancing were unknown. Recent Age and Aging publications by Shanahan et al. (2016), presented at the Irish Gerontology Society Annual Meeting 2016, have informed this question.