A team of researchers from the College of Nursing & Health Sciences at Flinders University are looking to develop a clinical guideline and recommendations for older patients and health care professionals about how to safely move more and sit less while in hospital for an acute illness.

Currently, there is no guidance or recommendations about how much activity is beneficial to do while in hospital, what types of activity can be done, or what interventions/approaches are most effective for patients and health professionals to use. This project is seeking to review research evidence to answer these questions and provide information to older patients and health care professionals.

The team wishes to build a Consumer Advisory Group to guide the development of their project. Community members will be asked to convene three times, over a 12–14-month period. Each meeting is proposed to be up to 2 hours in duration with 1 hour of preparatory work (e.g., reading meeting agenda and reflecting on the key meeting questions)

Experience required - consumers: 5 members who are older adults (aged 50 years or older) or caregivers of an older adult, who has had lived experience of an acute care (not rehabilitation) hospitalisation for an acute medical illness.

Deadline to apply:  14 November 2022, 12PM

Meeting participation options are face to face (at Flinders University, Sturt Campus – a car parking space can be arranged free of charge, or re-imbursement for public transport costs) or online via the Microsoft Teams platform

Goals of meetings:

• Meeting 1: aim is to gain consumer input to prioritise which topics/ideas we have about improving physical activity and minimising sedentary behaviour during acute hospitalisation are most important to cover, and what outcomes or improvements consumers would want to gain from better support of activity and mobility during hospitalisation
• Meeting 2: aim would be to review some of the early findings from a review of research evidence about sitting less and moving more during hospitalisation, to help the research team understand them more. For example, what might we need to know about how feasible, acceptable or accessible the potential recommendations are, and how might we word recommendations in an understandable way
• Meeting 3: aim would be further discussion on how we might word recommendations in an understandable way, but also what type of information would be most helpful (and in what format) to provide older adults in hospital; we would like to develop a consumer directed/informed resource to go along with our eventual recommendations document.

Reimbursement:  Reimbursement for this engagement includes time for meeting preparation/reading materials, meeting attendance and transportation. Reimbursement will follow the SA Health policy for reimbursing consumers and community members policy. (35$/hr)

If you would like to contribute to this project, please complete the Expression of Interest form below and send it to Dr Claire Baldwin claire.baldwin@flinders.edu.au

If you would like to receive more information about the project or have any questions, please also communicate with Dr Claire Baldwin claire.baldwin@flinders.edu.au