Awardee: Associate Professor Claire Baldwin
Title of project: Developing a guideline to support older adults to sit less and move more during acute hospitalisation
Year of completion: 2024
In 2022, Associate Professor Claire Baldwin received a grant under the Strategic Innovation Program which supported the development of a comprehensive practice guideline with recommendations on supporting older adults to sit less and move more when admitted to hospital for an acute illness.
As a Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy and researcher at Flinders University's Caring Futures Institute, and clinician at Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide, Claire combines her clinical training in physiotherapy with her research skills to develop tangible outcomes that ‘help the most at-risk patients in hospital get moving.'
The focus of the awarded project was to develop guidelines with recommendations for older adults’ physical activity and sedentary behaviour in the acute hospital setting with specific objectives of:
- using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology to develop the practice guideline
- seeking expert and consumer (including end-user) engagement throughout the guideline development process
- disseminating project findings by both academic and consumer directed means.
As part of the guideline development process, Claire and the team identified a range of implementation considerations for patients and staff. For patients, this included participating in discussions and decisions about physical recovery and ensuring they are aware that they may be asked questions about their independence with daily tasks while in hospital.
For staff, practice considerations included improving/maintaining knowledge about hospital associated functional decline and assessing and monitoring patients physical and cognitive capabilities daily, whilst providing encouragement and initiating conversations with patients to understand their goals, priorities, concerns and any symptoms limiting their ability to move more across the day.
The scoping review work for the project was presented at the 2022 AAG national conference, as a pre-recorded oral presentation and e-poster, with the final guideline and recommendations presented at 2024 AAG national conference in Hobart.
In addition, Claire:
- presented a progress update of this work at the Global EndPJparalysis Summit in July 2023, at invitation of panel member Brian Dolan
- gave a presentation on this work at a ‘Knowledge Exchange’ seminar within the Caring Futures Institute at Flinders University in June 2024
- wrote an AAG 500 Blog on the project in June 2024.
In her blog, Claire writes, "Thanks to a 2022 Strategic Innovation Program grant, my collaborators and I are making world-first evidence-based recommendations for older adults who are hospitalised with an acute medical illness, on using functional and self-care activities as opportunities to accumulate body-movement throughout the day."
In her final report, Claire thanked AAG "for the opportunities and impact this grant has had, to conduct this research, to allow me to grow in research leadership, and to collaborate with such a fantastic team of academics and consumers as part of the project stakeholder teams."