| Learning Objective #1: Understand the nature of complex partnership working across the interface of health and social care and research and scholarship through a community rehabilitation project in England | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Identify ways in which nurses and other health and social care professionals can develop self-evaluation knowledge and skills for the benefit of patients |
A newly established community rehabilitation service is the context for this presentation. The joint service provided as a partnership between social services and the health services became operational in Bristol, England from April 2000, providing intensive rehabilitation for up to six weeks for older people in their own homes. Four multidisciplinary teams provide the service: physiotherapists, nurses, occupational therapists and community rehabilitation workers. The overall aim of the service for older people is either to prevent hospital/residential home admission, or facilitate early discharge from hospital.
Joint working and developing partnerships between the health and social services is challenging (Thomas et al, 2000), and the failures of joint working, is often evident (Means et al, 2002). Health service research in the United Kingdom has become well established, however within the social services, the use of research and evidence in practice is at an early stage of development (Hek et al, 2002). When new services develop, particularly those that involve partnership and joint working, researchers need to find innovative ways of evaluating them. Against this backdrop, a research team from the University developed a framework by which the practitioners themselves were able, in a robust manner, to develop their knowledge and skills to self-evaluate the service they were providing.
The research project demonstrated how community rehabilitation teams developed their self-evaluation and research utilization skills to a point where they were able to critically reflect on the service they were providing. Supported by the research team, they were themselves able to use research skills to evaluate the service. Within the challenging environment at the interface of health and social care in the community, nurses and other health and social care professionals were able to work in partnership to provide a community rehabilitation service that met the needs of their elderly patients.
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