Grant: CIHR Fellowship

The goal of this project is to develop and test an intervention to increase health care aides' use of research evidence in long-term care. In nursing homes in Canada 70-80% of direct care is delivered by health care aides and 70-80% if not more of nursing home residents have dementia. Improving dementia behaviour management with health care aides is the focus of the intervention. This project is situated within a research program, Translating Research in Elder Care (TREC). In Phase 1 of the project, the intervention will be developed by conducting an analysis of performance gaps in dementia behaviour management. First, I will review wave one of TREC survey data from the total sample of 36 nursing homes to determine which measured variables affect health care aides' abilities to implement research when delivering care. Second, I will review resident outcome data on dementia behaviour management, using the Minimum Data Set/Resident Assessment Instrument version two (MDS-RAI 2.0). A needs assessment will also be conducted by interviewing 12-14 health care aides to determine their needs and what would support their use of research evidence in providing patient care. The intervention will be developed using the results of the analyses from Phase 1. In Phase 2 of the project, the intervention will be pilot tested in two of the TREC facilities, to assess the effectiveness of the facilitation intervention to increase research use among health care aides. The pilot test will provide critical information to plan a full intervention study. This intervention will contribute to our understanding of using facilitation to increase evidence use in long-term care, an important step in improving the quality of life for nursing home residents.