This pilot study aimed to compare the effect of companion robots (PARO) to participation in an interactive reading group on emotions in people living with moderate to severe dementia in a residential care setting. A randomized crossover design, with PARO and reading control groups, was used. Eighteen residents with mid- to late-stage dementia from one aged care facility in Queensland, Australia, were recruited. Participants were assessed three times using the Quality of Life in Alzheimer's Disease, Rating Anxiety in Dementia, Apathy Evaluation, Geriatric Depression, and Revised Algase Wandering Scales. PARO had a moderate to large positive influence on participants' quality of life compared to the reading group. The PARO intervention group had higher pleasure scores when compared to the reading group. Findings suggest PARO may be useful as a treatment option for people with dementia; however, the need for a larger trial was identified.

PurposeThis paper reports on some of the findings of a literature review commissioned to explore integrated care for older people.MethodsThe process of revising included finding and selecting literature from multidisciplinary sources, and encompassed both published papers and ‘grey’ literature, i.e. material which had not been reviewed for publication.ResultsThe study found that thinking has moved on from a focus on the problems of accessing services to exploring ways in which they may function in an integrated way.ConclusionsThe study shows how thinking on integrated care for older people has developed, and knowledge of micro, mezzo and macro strategies is now more available.

Partnership research with older people -moving towards making the rhetoric a reality As nursing develops closer partnerships with older people in delivering care, it also needs to develop partnerships in order to create the knowledge base for practice in a way that challenges professional hegemony and empowers older people. However, the process of developing partnerships in research takes place against a background of academic research traditions and norms, which can present obstacles to collaboration. This paper is a reflection on the issues that have arisen in three projects where older people were involved in research at different levels, from sources of data to independent researchers. It points to some of the areas that need further exploration and development.

Studies in environmental gerontology have progressed our understanding of the ways in which older people respond to and manage the environments in which they live, including their decisions about relocation and the influencing factors. Much of this work, however, has been done with relatively healthy and mobile older people living in domestic environments. It is often the case that when care-home residents move, the decisions are taken by others while the residents are passive and maybe hardly consulted. Far from the residents' preferences and initiatives being instrumental, they are moved by imposition. In the United Kingdom, the setting of this study, such imposed moves are common, partly because registration regulations restrict the range of care that a home can provide, and make some moves unavoidable. A questionnaire was distributed to care homes in two English local authorities to determine the incidence of relocation, and 10 homes were approached to take part in further studies, which included case-note audits, and interviews with staff and 12 older people who had relocated. The study found that the pattern of moves was complex, and that some residents were active in deciding to relocate and in the selection of the relocation home. The study concludes, however, that for residents to have an active role, they must be given support both to access the information required for decision-making and to implement their decisions.

The construction of a meaningful life depends upon satisfying ‘fundamental human needs’. These are broadly categorised as: physical, social and self-actualisation needs that every human experiences. Some fundamental human needs satisfiers, such as ‘home’, are synergic, addressing more than one need. For an older person, the move to a care home compromises their ontological security (through disruption of identification with place and control over environment) that one's own ‘home’ provides. This paper explores the complex issues surrounding the residential status of care home residents in terms of fundamental human needs. The methodology utilised was hermeneutic phenomenology. Eight older residents participated in the study, and each resident was interviewed up to eight times over a period of six months. Narrative analysis was used to interpret how participants viewed their experiences and environment. Five themes emerged from the narratives that collectively demonstrate that residents wanted their residential status to involve ‘living with care’ rather than ‘existing in care’. The five themes were: ‘caring for oneself/being cared for’; ‘being in control/losing control’; ‘relating to others/putting up with others’; ‘active choosers and users of space/occupying space’ and ‘engaging in meaningful activity/lacking meaningful activity’. This study indicates that if care homes are to achieve synergic qualities so residents are able to regard care homes as ‘home’, then care home staff may need to be more focused on recognising, acknowledging and supporting residents' aspirations regarding their future lives, and their status as residents.

This article presents findings from a cross-study analysis of social engagement between older people and staff in care homes. The studies found that staff and the culture of the care home were influential in determining the quality and type of relationship between residents and staff. Although a number of factors limited the quality of social interactions between these groups, practices existed that overcame barriers to the development of positive social relationships.

Background: The increasingly complex nature of care home residents' health status means that this population requires significant multidisciplinary team input from health services. To address this, a multisector and multiprofessional enhanced healthcare programme was implemented in nursing homes across Gateshead Council in Northern England. Study Aims: To explore the views and experiences of practitioners, social care officers, and carers involved in the enhanced health care in care home programme, in order to develop understanding of the service delivery model and associated workforce needs for the provision of health care to older residents. Methods: A qualitative constructivist methodology was adopted. The study had two stages. Stage 1 explored the experiences of the programme enhanced healthcare workforce through group, dyad, and individual interviews with 45 participants. Stage 2 involved two workshops with 28 participants to develop Stage 1 findings (data were collected during February-March 2016). Thematic and content analysis were applied. Findings: The enhanced healthcare programme provides a whole system approach to the delivery of proactive and responsive care for nursing home residents. The service model enables information exchange across organizational and professional boundaries that support effective decision making and problem solving. Clinical Relevance: Understanding of the processes and outcomes of a model of integrated health care between public and independent sector care home services for older people.

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the issues, the role of research data management (RDM) as a mechanism for implementing open research data and the role and opportunities for records managers. The open data agenda is premised on making as much data as possible open and available. However, in the context of open research data there are methodological, ethical and practical issues with this premise. Design/methodology/approach – Two collaborative research projects focusing on qualitative health data were conducted. “DATUM for Health” designed and delivered a tailored RDM skills training programme for postgraduate research students in health studies. “DATUM in Action” was an action research project between researchers from information sciences, health, mathematics and computing, looking at planning and implementing RDM. Findings – Three key issues emerged about what research data is appropriate to make open/accessible for sharing and reuse: re-using qualitative data conflicts with some of the epistemological and methodological principles of qualitative research; there are ethical concerns about making data obtained from human participants open, which are not completely addressed by consent and anonymisation; many research projects are small scale and the costs of preparing and curating data for open access can outweigh its value. In exploring these issues, the authors advocate the need for effective appraisal skills and researcher-focused RDM with records managers playing a useful role. Research limitations/implications – The findings come from two small-scale qualitative projects in health studies. Further exploration of these issues is required. Practical implications – Records managers have new crucial opportunities in the open data and RDM contexts, bringing their expertise and experience in managing a wider range of data and information. They can help realise the benefits of multiple perspectives (researcher, data manager, records manager and archivist) on open research data. Social implications – Researcher-focused RDM offers a mechanism for implementing open research data. Originality/value – It raises complex issues around open research data not found in the records management literature, highlights the need for researcher-focussed RDM and research data appraisal skills and a not yet fully recognised role for records managers.