Grant: Operating Grant: Knowledge to Action

Older people are not routinely mobilized in hospital and functional decline is a hazard of hospitalization; mobilization of older people can decrease length of stay and prevent admission to long-term care. We implemented an early mobilization (MOVE) strategy in 13 hospitals in Ontario and analysis shows an absolute increase in mobility of patients by 8%; thus, only 13 patients would need to receive the intervention to increase optimal mobility in 1. The interest in spreading MOVE to other sites provides an opportunity to understand how to optimize the intervention so others can easily and optimally implement it. MOVE stakeholder interviews identified that organizational readiness to change could have been addressed better and thus, we created a decision support tool to help participating sites identify and use an appropriate tool to optimise organisational readiness prior to MOVE implementation. Our objectives are to 1. implement and evaluate the impact of an evidence-based strategy to promote early mobilisation and prevent functional decline in older patients admitted to Alberta acute care facilities following completion of an evidence-based readiness to change assessment versus an early mobilisation intervention alone; and, 2. develop an implementation toolkit for an early mobilisation program that can be adopted by other knowledge users globally.