Understanding research in care homes - An open online training tool

Abstract

Introduction: There are over 18,000 care homes in England providing homes and care for over 386,000 people with a workforce of over 200,000. Care home residents have been previously overlooked by researchers and with the national NIHR ENRICH programme looking to work with care homes and their residents in raising the accessibility to take part in studies. We are seeing evidence that this is empowering residents and carers, and its increasing interest of residents in own wellbeing and they are helping to shape future research. With the UK Governments Dementia strategy we are seeing an increase in researchers wishing to undertake studies in care home. Aim: Our aim was to enable a new potential workforce of care home staff to support and deliver NIHR portfolio studies. This required a new and innovative training tool that could be deployed flexibly within care homes. Objectives: Objectives include development of an easily accessible training platform, which when utilised will be available nationally. This tool would provide a massive workforce with a working knowledge around clinical research and the benefits to residents and organisations for taking part. The tool will be a highly cost effective platform allowing easy access via computers, smart phones or tablets. Development: A training focus group was setup comprising of care home staff and ENRICH facilitators. This group in collaboration with the NIHR Patient Engagement and Learning Manager has developed a training tool which staff will find easily accessible at home or at work via on line learning technology. With our 'Understanding Research in Care Homes' or URiCH course we have introduced techniques learned from the 'massive open online course' or MOOC movement to bring personable, flexible online learning to care home staff. We have interviewed and recorded care home managers, research delivery nurses, and care home staff and residents. They deliver the course material in a personalised first person style using video audio and documents. The course also includes assessments that help learning to take place, and on successful completion a certificate is awarded that can be printed or stored online. Our poster explores using digital technologies to address a training need using the latest online pedagogy of the MOOC. Delivered online, through computer or tablet. International Digital Health and Care Congress, The King’s Fund, London, September 10-12 2014. International Journal of Integrated Care – Volume 14, 01 November – URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-116475– http://www.ijic.org/ We will journey through the project from inception to creation and deployment. Discuss our findings from user pilots with care home staff (underway) and the reliability and underlying principles of flexible, responsive MOOC based technology. The phenomena that is the MOOC is changing the educational landscape worldwide. It is becoming an increasingly popular for lifelong learning and it relatively new to the healthcare arena. This online training technology has tremendous implications for healthcare training going forward and we are already addressing future projects for disseminating this training tool to other potential new members of the clinical research workforce.