Exploring why care homes should engage in research, and how staff & residents benefit

In this blog post, Carinna UY, Senior Nurse from Kineton Manor Nursing Home in Warwick, speaks with ENRICH West Midlands Facilitator Fawn Harrad about her experience of taking part in a local study

As a doctor researcher within UCL psychiatry, I am concerned with what works to help people with dementia and their families and to generate and help implement research which makes a difference to future dementia challenges.

Providing an update from the recemt Care Home Medicine conference.

Upon your arrival at a care home the last thing you want to see as a researcher is the care staff cowering away in the kitchen and the face drop of a visiting relative.

There is a growing body of research into the issues of sight loss in older age. However, little focuses explicitly on the perspectives of older people living in residential care.

It easy to think at the beginning of a study that once care homes have been recruited, the rest of the study will be plain sailing…. think again!

When developing a research study there is lots of information on how to design a study; however, there is less guidance available on how to go about collecting the data and working with participants. This is something I reflected upon whilst developing the training for researchers working on the IDEAL study (Improving the experience of Dementia and Enhancing Active Life; www.IDEALproject.org.uk).

The ENRICH initiative has been running for several years, the overall aim has been to improve the support provided to researchers wishing to work with care homes, improve care homes access, influence and involvement in research and address issues with care home residents being underrepresented in research and in clinical trials.

I have had the honour of being involved in a number of studies involving those living, and working, in care homes over the past few years. This has meant seeing first-hand how challenging it can be for care homes to balance research activities alongside their, often extremely busy, role providing care for those living there. But also, how their commitment to ensuring that their residents are provided with the best possible care is woven through both these roles.