Project: Falls in Care Homes (FinCH Imp2 study)

Principle Investigator:  Professor Pip Logan

Team members: Dr Jane Horne, Dr Fran Allen, Maureen Godfrey, Professor Adam Gordon, Professor John Gladman, Dr Katie Robinson, Dr Paul Leighton, Dr Janet Darby, Michael Fletcher, Professor Gillian Manthorpe, Professor Barbara Hanratty, Professor Dan Lasserson, Professor Elizabeth Orton.

Partners: Nottingham University Hospitals (NHS) Trust; Leicestershire County Council (Local Government); University of Newcastle, Kings College London; NHS Bromley CCG;  Northumbria-Healthcare NHS Trust.

Research sites: East Midlands, North East (North Cumbria), West Midlands and South London.

Starts:  1/10/2021

Ends:  30/9/2023 

Lay Summary

People who live in care homes are at great risk of falling.  Falls are common, harmful, costly, and difficult to prevent. The Guide to Action for Falls Prevention Care Homes (GtACH) programme trains and supports care home staff to identify the reasons why residents fall and then guides them to complete actions to reduce falls. In a large multicentre randomised controlled trial called the FinCH trial (1), the GtACH programme was cost-effective and reduced falls by 43%. We now need to research how to deliver the GtACH programme in ‘real life’ outside a research trial.

We will work with three regions – East Midlands, South London and the North-East - to develop and research ideas about taking up the GtACH training programme which can be used nationwide. 

Using an approach to talking to people in care homes called Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) we will consider the work that people do in managing falls to assess whether GtACH becomes routine practice. NPT will help us to think about those things which help and those which hinder the adoption of GtACH.

We have three work packages:

• WP1. Quality Improvement Collaboratives (QIC) will bring care home and healthcare staff together to develop and research ways to implement the GtACH.

• WP2. The QIC site teams will implement GtACH in 25 care homes per region (60 in total). Data from all homes and residents (about 2000 residents) will tell us the extent to which GtACH has been taken up in the homes.

• WP3. We will develop ‘toolkits’ of materials for care homes; containing the GtACH, a ‘return on investment’ calculator, the implementation package, and a ‘how to’ guide for establishing Communities of Practice to deliver and sustain the GtACH across regions.

This study has been developed in collaboration with care home managers, care home staff, NHS clinicians and our active Patient, Public, Involvement (PPI) group who are co applicants. Going forward we have identified new PPI partners from Ashington and Bromley. We will talk by videoconferencing if needed.

The study will be completed by July 2023 and we will disseminate our findings on the ARC-EM website, producing a short trailer video for YouTube, and through articles in journals and MyHomeLife Magazine. We will link our website on the national forums of the National Care Forum, Skills for Care, and Care England, Age UK, and the Alzheimer’s Society, and hold webinars for funders and managers

Method

Using monthly stakeholder meetings, consensus groups, interviews and literature searching we re-designed the GtACH into a suite of resources that care homes were happy to use and renamed it, on their request, to the Action Falls programme. Using an implementation theory called Normalisation Programme Theory we designed a research study to test how the Action Falls programme worked in 60 real world care homes. Care homes are being recruited across four ARC locations. All care home staff included in the 60 homes are being invited to complete the Action Falls training and complete a questionnaire (called the NoMAD) to assess how ready they are to use the programme. Interviews with care home staff and the trainers are being completed to get a first-hand view of how well the Action Falls is getting embedded into routine care. Care home staff are coming together in supportive collaborations, called Action falls Collaborations (AFC) to share knowledge, with researchers collecting data at these events. 

Results

Ethical approval for the study has been granted by HRA East Midlands and Derby Research Ethics Committee Ref: 22\EM\0035.  The study is adopted by the NIHR portfolio and the NIHR Clinical Research Network are helping to deliver the study in all locations, which are listed below in brackets.

36 care homes (60%) have been recruited, 13 in ARC North East (NE), 9 ARC London South (SE), 14 ARC East Midlands (EM).   ARC West Midlands (WM) will start recruitment soon. In the ARC EM location we have four separate NHS Trusts/ Local authority areas involved. 7 NHS/ Local Authority/HEI Falls Leads have been trained in ARC’s NE, LS and EM and have begun training of the care home staff across the locations. One AFC has taken place in NE with the East Midlands AFC and South London due to take place later this month. The NoMAD questionnaires have been delivered to care homes. No interviews have yet been completed as these are due to start in November. 

In addition to the four locations the team have interacted with 83 individual care homes and 47 stakeholder groups sending them the Action Falls resources and talking over how they might be used, but no training has been offered. The images below show the spread of these enquiries

Conclusion

The study is progressing well, and care homes are very keen to take part and recruitment for the study is currently at 60%.  The sites are set up and staff are in posts. We are approximately three months behind target on the activities due to care homes being reluctant to engage early in 2022 due to COVID. We consider that we may need a no cost 6-month extension to complete all the activities and to also get the Action Falls programme ready for wider spread.

All our study meetings are well attended, and we have good participation from our PPI members with information being communicated from out Study Steering Group to the Stakeholders and vice versa sharing knowledge and experience.

The study has gathered a lot of interest from outside of the study areas, from care homes and a range of other stakeholders. The research team have been sending out study materials and meeting with these groups over MS Teams meetings sharing resources and information about the study.A PhD student will be working with the care homes outside of our study locations from October 2022.