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Purpose: 

Hip fractures are an important public health issue. Ninety-five percent of hip fractures are caused by falls, with those at greatest risk including residents of long-term care facilities. Hip protectors can be effective in preventing hip fractures, but levels of acceptance and adherence may be low. We report on work to develop research into a new hip protector that aims to overcome some of the acceptance and adherence challenges.

Methods: 

We held five patient and public consultation events involving 147 older adults and 10 long-term care sector staff in the Midlands and North West of England. At each event, participants were shown the Fall-Safe Assist hip protector, which includes built-in mobile technology to record information about falls and summon help from caregivers.

Results: 

Participants were positive about the product’s potential utility and impact upon confidence in moving around. However, many participants held highly personal perceptions of their vulnerability and need, and expressed concerns about the esthetics and practicality of the accompanying underwear. Participants highlighted potential challenges from poor mobile connectivity, and expressed concerns about product cost.

Conclusions:

 Future research will need to ensure flexible and sensitive approaches to recruitment. Further refinement to the product design may be useful. Individual interviews and questionnaires would help capture participants’ perceptions on personal topics, and measures of changes in confidence. Research sites will need to be compatible with technological functionality. It will be necessary to have a robust protocol in place for withdrawal of the product at the end of any clinical research.

This qualitative study explores Swedish case workers experiences of decision making regarding disabled children's right to obtain assistance in their everyday life whereby they can live independently in the community. Data collection included seven focus-group interviews and 11 complementary individual interviews with case workers from different agencies responsible for decisions regardig access to personal assistance. Grounded theory methodology was used. Compromised professional integrity under shifting conditions emerged as a main concern and maintaing professional integrity was used as an approach to resolve it. The case workers are maintaining professional integrity by applying different strategies; struggling with division of responsibility, bureaucratizig, and justifying and protecting. The results indicate that present application of assessment criteria in combination with the utilization of precedent rulings has made it difficult for the case workers to make decisions that provide children access to assistance. Current practice raises questions about the case workers perspectives of professionalism.

Purpose: Examining everyday challenges in the interactions between people with intellectual disabilities and their staff, as seen from the user’s perspective, is an important perspective in health care research. Involving people with intellectual disabilities as so-called co-researchers is a relatively unexplored research strategy. In this paper, co-researchers participated in all the steps of the research process, from planning to reporting, in addition to the written reporting of the findings. The aim of this study was to explore how people with intellectual disabilities experienced a filmed vignette of an everyday situation.

Method: Based on audio-recorded and transcribed individual and focus-group interviews with people with intellectual disabil- ities, performed by co-researchers with intellectual disabilities together with researchers, qualitative content analysis was used.

Results: The analysis reveals three themes: “being emotionally touched”, “being aware of the other”, and “being unclear”.

Conclusions: The results are discussed in light of normalization and participation in society with independence and one’s own decision-making. Regarding the care of people with intellectual disabilities, the main finding is the need to focus not only on greater involvement of this population in their own daily lives, but also to teach self-determination skills. Another finding is the importance of involving people with intellectual impairment as co-researchers.

Background: Aphasia is an acquired impairment in language and in the cognitive processes that underlie language. Aphasia affects the quality of life of the person with aphasia (PWA) and his or her families in various ways in diverse contexts and cultures. It is therefore important that speech language therapists understand how different contextual and cultural factors may mediate experiences.

Purpose: The aim of the study was to describe the caregiving experience of female caregivers of PWA residing in Tembisa, a township situated in the east of Johannesburg.

Method: Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with primary caregivers of PWA. Purposive sampling was used to recruit 14 primary caregivers of PWA who were daughters, daughters-in-law or wives of the PWA. The interviews were conducted in participants’ first language and analysed by the researcher, who is proficient in isiZulu. Data were analysed according to the principles of thematic analysis.

Results: Findings indicated that caregivers are unfamiliar with aphasia and the support available to them. Participants experienced frustration and found communication to be challenging owing to their lack of communication strategies. The participants’ experiences reflected their context-specific experiences, such as feminisation of caregiving, barriers to healthcare, the influence of low health literacy and contextual perspectives on stroke and aphasia.

Conclusions: Contextual factors of caregivers in Tembisa have an influence on the experiences between caregivers and PWA, the feelings of individuals and families and health-seeking behaviours of individuals and families.