Abstract
Care homes have the potential to be vibrant, engaging learning environments, providing excellent care for complex patients (Zubair et al., 2017), inspiring and enthusing the healthcare professionals of tomorrow. The care home sector is growing and now accounts for over 478,000 beds, three times the number of acute beds in the NHS (Illife et al., 2016). Despite this growth, education for nurses, doctors and allied health professionals rarely includes practice experience or significant engagement with care homes. Future health professionals, therefore, miss the opportunity to learn about the increasingly important care home environment. This omission, along with staff recruitment and retention issues, low pay and low morale (Scottish Care, 2015) can contribute to high staff turnover and a greater risk of poor care (Scottish Government, 2014).
Ensuring the future workforce are well prepared for work in the care home sector is a healthcare priority (Spilsbury et al., 2015). This preparation involves practical experience and engagement with care home environments, residents and staff through practice placement experiences, as well as the development of research and knowledge exchange activities in the care home sector. Positive care home experiences are developed through staff engagement with person-centred care approaches and based on research carried out in the care home sector (Callaghan and Ritchie, 2017).
Both the care home sector and higher education institutions (HEIs) providing nurse education have much to learn from those who have taken steps to build partnerships and models of practice that can be mutually beneficial in developing education, care and research in care homes. The reviewed paper clearly outlines the complexity of the partnerships required to effectively develop the Teaching and Research Aged Care Service (TRACS). The paper highlights the importance of focusing on performance across all aspects of the collaboration: aged care provision, teaching and learning, research, communication and dissemination, and partnership. Each of these interacting elements is key to the success of the TRACS project, although centres may choose to prioritise elements differently. The paper provides considerable detail from which service providers and HEIs can benefit.
The reviewed paper effectively highlights the positive benefits to both the care workforce and students in engaging in partnership. Students found that the placement increased knowledge and skills, while staff appreciated benefits in CPD education provision and ongoing learning opportunities. These findings demonstrate the potential that partnerships between education and care home sectors may have internationally.
The development of research capacity, access and confidence in the care home sector is central to greater understanding of the needs of both staff and residents. For example, with 19% of the UK population dying in care homes (Department of Health, 2012), care home staff are increasingly identifying areas of unmet palliative care need and require both educational and emotional support in order to care effectively for residents at the end of life (Vandrevala et al., 2016). The TRACS evaluation has demonstrated gains through partnership that could facilitate research and the development of an evidence base for future care practice.
The evaluation highlights the complexity of this kind of partnership as TRACS challenges a model not originally designed for research and education, but for direct care provision. However, the paper is hugely encouraging in presenting clear evidence of success and demonstrating the immense possibilities that could await those willing to invest the time and resources in developments of this kind in future. The paper describes the TRACS ‘footprint’, and the care home sector, HEIs and healthcare professionals of the future may have much to gain from following those footprints into innovative future partnerships.