Reablement Intervention for Older Adults Conducted by a Multi Professional Home Rehabilitation Team

Summary

Background: People live increasingly longer and are expected to function independently in their own homes to a greater extent than before. This puts great demands on the support given to older persons living at home, to be efficient and provide good conditions for them to manage on their own and experience good health. Short time goal directed reablement delivered by a multidisciplinary team is expected to strengthen the functional capacity and quality of life, while home care-hours and thus municipal expenditures decline. Theoretical focus of this project is related to international classification of functionality and disability (ICF) in which participation are understood as engagement in life situations and related to the environment as well as the person. Reablement is expected to extend the time of independent and autonomous life for older persons while also reducing municipal costs of elder care.

Aim: This research project measures the effects of reablement in terms of bio-psycho-social health among older people (65+). In addition, the project highlights older person's experiences of the intervention and the professional team´s experiences of working with reablement.

Methods: This is a randomized controlled study of the intervention reablement performed by the multiprofessional team with controls receiving usual home care. The effects are measured by self-reported health and quality of life, physical capacity, and home care hours. Data are collected at inclusion (applying for home care), after the three months intervention and at six months. Interviews with users are performed after the intervention, and staff experiences through written narratives.

Impact of results: This project will contribute with collecting possible evidence of reablement, and contribute with knowledge development of older persons' bio-psycho-social health and experiences.

Conditions

• Rehabilitation by Recovery of Function

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Reablement

Intensive home-based rehabilitation is delivered up to 3 months by an interprofessional team (nurse, enrolled nurse, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, social worker). The entire team completed a 5-week college course. The team negotiates goal-directed contents of the rehabilitation initiatives with the user. Each user is handled deliberately based on decisions in the team in cooperation with the care managers overarching goals in admitted services. All participants have personal contact persons, and these contact persons have twice the time per participant as compared to traditional home care. The interprofessional team also has regular meetings to discuss every participant, and all rehabilitation goals activities related to those are documented.

BEHAVIORAL

Traditional home care

Traditional home care and required rehabilitation efforts as by the municipality's current practice. Includes the same professions as is included in the reablement intervention, but the team has had no joint college course, does not use the systematic goal-directed and negotiated approach as the reablement intervention, and has about half the time per participant as compared to the reablement intervention.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Mälardalen University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Lena-Karin Gustafsson, PhD · Mälardalen University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

65 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2016-01-01

Primary Completion

2019-06-05

Completion

2019-08-31

Countries

• Sweden

Study Locations