A research team from UW–Madison has published a paper in Health Education Journal that is titled, “Education and skills training for care partners of hospitalised older adults: a scoping review.”
The study was led by Madeline Carbery and Samantha Schwartz, both graduate students in occupational therapy in the School of Education’s Department of Kinesiology. Beth Fields, an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology, and Nicole Werner, an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in the College of Engineering, provided direct supervision of the project.
The purpose of the study was to identify gaps in the education and skills training provided to the care partners of hospitalized older adults. These gaps often lead to care partners feeling dissatisfied with the training provided to them, and they can result in unpreparedness and poor health outcomes for the patients they are caring for.
To identify gaps in the training of these care partners, the research team conducted a scoping review on education and skills training practices used with the care of hospitalized adults in the U.S., using a variety of reputable sources. “By conducting this scoping review, we were able to characterize what education and skills training looks like for care partners of hospitalized older adults,” explained Fields. “This work can help inform future research and practice efforts.”
Fields added: “Based on the findings from the literature, it is clear that we need to do better job at developing, testing, and implementing interprofessional collaborative approaches to care that occur early on in the hospitalization process. My hope is that our work raises awareness for the importance of care partner education and skills training.”