"Things won't improve if they're just left to fester”. A qualitative study exploring how UK care home staff perceive and experience engagement in health research.

Stephens, Madison ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0902-0633 and Mankee-Williams, Anna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0829-8441 (2022) "Things won't improve if they're just left to fester”. A qualitative study exploring how UK care home staff perceive and experience engagement in health research. Journal of Long Term Care, 0 (2022). pp. 268-276. ISSN 2516-9122

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Abstract / Summary

Context
Care homes are challenging environments to conduct research with care homes being under-represented within research literature compared to other healthcare settings. This is concerning as research can improve organisational and health outcomes, in turn protecting public health. Evidence exploring how care home staff perceive and experience research engagement is scant and requires further inquiry.
Objective(s):
To generate new insights into how care home staff perceive and experience research engagement.
Methods
A phenomenological approach using structured micro-interviews with a convenience, snowball sample of 26 care home staff. An inductive approach using thematic analysis was employed to analyse interview data.
Findings:
Most participants were unfamiliar with research citing time constraints, workload, and a lack of opportunity as barriers to participation. Despite their unfamiliarity, participants understood research to mean the attainment of knowledge and recognised positive and tangible outcomes as markers of successful research. Conversely, some care home staff were unsure what facilitated research engagement, although a few participants highlighted the role of the researcher as a determinant. Many care home staff in this study did not consider research to be part of their professional responsibility.
Limitations:
The study was limited by the position of the researcher, an overrepresentation of healthcare assistants and females and the inability to transfer findings beyond Cornwall.
Implications:
More needs to be done to engage care home staff in research to improve their overall representation within research. More research is needed across different localities to replicate and validate the findings from this study.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number:	10.31389/jltc.137
Uncontrolled Keywords:	care home, inclusion, participation, care home staff, research.
ISSN:	2516-9122
eISSN:	2516-9122
Subjects:	Research Science Social Sciences
Courses by Department:	Academy of Innovation and Research
Depositing User:	Madi Stephens
Date Deposited:	02 Feb 2023 10:25
Last Modified:	07 Aug 2024 16:10
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/4506

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