Conducting clinical research and embedding person‐centred care into the hospital setting during a global pandemic: Challenges and solutions

Abstract

AbstractConducting scientific research in the healthcare context is an ongoing challenge. Immediate clinical care and related tasks take priority out of necessity, often in difficult circumstances including unplanned staff absenteeism and turnover, and resource limitations. These challenges are further exacerbated in times of crisis, such as the current worldwide pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2). The pandemic disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, such as people living with dementia who rely on aged and healthcare services. Concurrently research studies aiming to improve health and aged care for these people are also being negatively impacted by the pandemic. There is a need for the development of guidelines that will support researchers to implement and maintain quality studies during pandemics, to prevent unnecessary delay in the dissemination of research findings, that have the potential to improve healthcare delivery quality and outcomes.This presentation first highlights the main challenges and solutions that have emerged in a study aiming to improve healthcare for people living with dementia in hospital settings, using evidence‐based person‐centred care. In addition to evaluating health outcomes for people living with dementia and cost‐effectiveness, we are using a knowledge translation framework (Goodenough et al., 2017; Damschroder et al., 2009) to evaluate the implementation of the intervention (process and outcomes) and determine nationwide scalability for hospital ward and care services. Evidence on how to adapt research processes to enable research programs to continue throughout the pandemic will be presented, followed by a set of guidelines to support researchers to engage successfully in clinical research during a pandemic. The guidelines aim to be generalisable to all clinical research projects that have been impacted by the current SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic, as well as projects that may face future similar crises.ReferencesDamschroder LJ, Aron DC, Keith RE, et al. 2009. Fostering implementation of health research findings into practice: A consolidated framework for advancing implementation science. Implement Sci. 4(50):15 ‐20.Goodenough B, Young M. (2017). Innovation to Implementation for Dementia (i2i4dementia): A Practical Guide to Knowledge Translation in Health Care (with examples from aged care and dementia). Dementia Collaborative Research Centres, Australia. Access: DementiaKT.com.au