Project leaders

Angela Dickinson, Research Fellow (Older People's Health), University of Hertfordshire and Laurie Ager, Team Leader/Staff Nurse, Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust

Summary and Aims

To implement patient-focused mealtimes for older people within a hospital unit.

Aims

• To promote healthy ageing through improving mealtime care, by working towards the achievement of a patient-centred and enabling culture
• To contribute to the professional development of both individual staff and teams through establishing a supportive, learning culture, through action learning, the development of "facilitators of learning" and "critical companionship"
• To assess the usefulness of a model of practice development in implementing sustainable change in the real world of practice

Though this study focuses on nutritional care, we anticipate that the project, through addressing the unit culture, will impact on other aspects of patient care and thus other dimensions of older people's health.

Reports and publications

Dickinson, A., Welch, C. and Ager, L. (2008) No longer hungry in hospital: improving the hospital mealtime experience for older people through action research. Journal of Clinical Nursing. Vol. 17. No. 11. pp 1492-1502.

Download the FoNS' Dissemination Series Short Report (PDF 109KB)

Download the final project report - Dec 2005 (PDF 531KB)

Download background information about this project (PDF 59KB)

Download information about the action research process (PDF 68KB)

Download the findings of Phase 1 of the project (PDF 87KB)

Download a reference list (PDF 77KB)

Download an article from the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 2005 (PDF 83KB)

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