In this blog, I’d like to take you through some of the exciting benefits I’ve seen in getting Fulford involved in ongoing care home research.

In this blog, we draw on our experiences of developing research to explore coordination of care between care homes and the National Health Service (NHS). The system of healthcare in England can seem daunting and disjointed to many people, but particularly to people living in care homes, families and staff. We wanted to find out about a new role that had been created in the NHS during the pandemic, which was intended to boost standards and coordination of healthcare for people living in care homes. In the early stages of planning the research, we wanted to find out what people who live in care homes thought would be important to know, and to include questions which
researchers or professionals might not ask.

In this blog, Gary introduces the ongoing EHCH Study, which continues to recruit care homes in a two regions of South West England.

People living in care homes should expect the same level of support as if they were living in their own home. This can only be achieved through collaborative working between statutory health and social care providers, the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector, and care home partners. The EHCH model includes seven care elements, which move away from traditional reactive models of care delivery towards proactive care is centred on the needs of individual residents, their families, and care home staff. Such care can only be achieved through a whole-system, collaborative approach.

In this blog I describe a research project that aimed to understand hospital transfers from care homes by focusing on the work and decisions of care home staff.

Pharmacists are now reviewing the medication of older care home residents.  National guidance states that medication reviews should be person-centred, but what does this mean when applied to care home reviews? In this blog I discuss the experience one pharmacist I interviewed shared around a medication review they conducted and what it might mean to undertake a person-centred review.

I previously graduated from Cardiff University with BSc and MSc degrees in Psychology. One of my research interests is in research inclusivity and my PhD project focuses on identifying the
barriers and facilitators to care home resident research participation, and the development of an intervention to support residents in decision-making and advance planning for research, which I will talk about in this blog.

Keeping our mouths healthy is important, this is particularly the case as we age. There is a challenge for older people living in care homes as they may need assistance with this aspect of personal care. There are many reasons why mouth care may not receive the time and attention that it should in this context. We know that there is a gap between what should be done and what happens in the real world. So, what helps support older people with mouth care in care homes? And what are the challenges? Is there something missing in the way we think about this issue?  In this blog, we present the preliminary results of the COMMIT study (Caring Optimally: promoting effective Mouth MInuTes in care homes), where we are addressing these questions.

In this blog I discuss the ‘COS COVID PCARE’ study which aimed to reach agreement on the most important outcomes to measure when evaluating different interventions to prevent COVID-19 in care homes. This core outcome set (or ‘COS’) will enable researchers to compare which interventions are most effective at preventing COVID-19, and to ensure that future trials in this area focus on what matters most to care home residents and those who care for them.

In this blog, I will discuss ‘The D-DRINC study’, which is part of my PhD project. Our systematic review found that older people living in care homes were more commonly dehydrated, than older people living in the community. Researchers have trialled interventions in care home settings, to encourage older people to drink more drinks. However, many care home residents are still dehydrated. The D-DRINC study is an ethnographic study which aims to explore how people living with dementia drink in care homes. The knowledge gained from the D-DRINC study will be used to inform comprehensive, evidence-based drinking interventions, within care home settings.

In this blog, I discuss my ongoing study which is currently recruiting participants. The study is part of a PhD project exploring care relationships between support staff and adults and older adults with a learning disability (intellectual disability) in long-term social care residential settings in England. In this study, we are interested in hearing support staff’s thoughts on what makes their relationships with the people they support positive, how positive relationships are established and what impact they have on people’s lives, what factors can facilitate or hinder good care relationships, and other related topics.