Independence in Self Care - A Program Focused on Nursing Care

January 30, 2019 updated by: Cecília Maria Rodrigues, Centro Hospitalar do Porto
This study is a randomized clinical trial conducted in a medical ward of an acute 580-bedded teaching hospital. One hundred fifty-eight older acute medical patients will be blindly randomly allocated to the control group or intervention group. The intervention will consist of a twice daily walking training, plus privileging trips to the toilet by walking and all daytime meals seated. Differences between groups will be measured at baseline (admission) and discharge. As primary outcomes, we defined the length of stay and the independence level. The independence level will be assessed at baseline (admission) and discharge by two distinct methods: through the Barthel Index and the Patient Classification Systems(PCS).

Study Overview

Status

Unknown

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

The intervention group will perform the training program while the control group will receive usual hospital care. As the study will be conducted in the same ward and due to the possible effect of subjects in the control group seeing subjects in the intervention group performing physical activity in addition to normal hospital care and because the service team itself may intervene involuntarily in the control group through increased activity, randomization will take place in a time dependent manner. Patients admitted for the first 12 weeks will be assigned to the control group. After these twelve weeks there will be a 3-week break and in the next 12 weeks (week 16 to 27) the admitted patients will be assigned to the intervention group. During the 3-week break, all members of the clinic staff will receive training on the intervention program.

All testing (at admission and discharge) will be performed in the same setting (Centro Hospitalar do Porto, Porto, Portugal) and by the same investigators.

Participants will include elderly people aged 65 years or older recruited from patients admitted into one of the three medical wards of the Centro Hospitalar do Porto (Porto, Portugal). Due to the length of the study it is possible a patient will be readmitted after participating in either the control or experimental group. To avoid this confounding variable, a study participant who is readmitted to the hospital during the course of the study will not be included in the study population a second time.

All clinical information will be obtained through direct observation of patients and consultation of medical records.

Interventions Usual care group (control) Participants assigned to the control group will receive usual hospital care, which includes physical rehabilitation when needed.

Intervention group (training) The intervention will consist of an twice daily walking training, plus privileging trips to the toilet by walking (with support devices or with support from people) and all daytime meals seated (not in bed). Attending of the particular and unexplored characteristics of the proposed intervention, namely the use of the toilet and meals, the proposed intervention extends throughout the 24 hours of the day, seven days a week. Therefore, it is an intervention that requires the alignment of the whole care team in its execution. The duration and quality of the training, planned for weeks 13 to 15, will be crucial to ensure the involvement of the whole team and the success of this study. We will re-organize the daily work of this particular service in order to focus nursing care on promoting independence in self-care.

Walk training will consist of walking as far as possible with or without assistance for 20 minutes. All training sessions will be individually monitored with a record of training completed compiled.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Anticipated)

158

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

      • Porto, Portugal, 4099-001
        • Recruiting
        • Centro Hospitalar do Porto - Departamento Qualidade
        • Contact:

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Child
  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Age: 65 years or older.
  • Able to ambulate, with or without personal/ technical assistance.
  • Able to communicate.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Expected length of stay <72 hours
  • Patients permanently bedridden prior to admission
  • Any factor precluding performance of the physical training program. These factors include, but are not limited to the following:

    • Terminal illness.
    • Unstable cardiovascular disease or other medical condition.
    • Severe dementia.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Prevention
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Sequential Assignment
  • Masking: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Placebo Comparator: Usual Care Group
Intervention: Usual care
Usual hospital care
Experimental: Intervention Group
Intervention:Promoting independence in self-care
The intervention will consist of an twice daily walking training, plus privileging trips to the toilet by walking (with support devices or with support from people) and all daytime meals seated (not in bed). Attending of the particular and unexplored characteristics of the proposed intervention, namely the use of the toilet and meals, the proposed intervention extends throughout the 24 hours of the day, seven days a week.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Independence level in self-care
Time Frame: The level of independence in self-care will be assessed at baseline (admission) and discharge through the Barthel Index
Barthel Index: The sum-score ranges from 0 (totally dependent) to 100 (totally independent)
The level of independence in self-care will be assessed at baseline (admission) and discharge through the Barthel Index

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

May 1, 2017

Primary Completion (Actual)

May 31, 2018

Study Completion (Anticipated)

May 31, 2019

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

March 27, 2017

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 4, 2017

First Posted (Actual)

April 10, 2017

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

February 1, 2019

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 30, 2019

Last Verified

January 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2016.037(032-DEFI/032-CES)

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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