Feasibility of Additional Physiotherapy for Patients Aged 75 and Older

Overview

On average, people become physically weaker during even a short stay in hospital. This study is a feasibility/pilot study to see if additional physiotherapy exercises undertaken in hospital is feasible and acceptable to patients. The study will compare two different types of physiotherapy exercise. Both exercise programmes involve twice-daily physiotherapy provided by one of the hospital's physiotherapy assistants, but only one of the two exercise programmes expected to provide benefit. This is on top of the care that people would normally receive, and will last for the first 7 days of their hospital admission (or until they are discharged if this is earlier). Patients will be asked to consent to the study during the first 36 hours of their hospital admission. If patients provide consent, they will undergo a baseline assessment of their functional ability (including testing of their muscle strength) before being randomly assigned to one of the two exercise programmes. The study aims to recruit 15 patients to each group (30 in total). Once randomised patients will be seen twice a day by a physiotherapy assistant who will supervise the exercise programme. On the day that participants are discharged (or day 7 of their admission if earlier) the assessor will repeat measures of the participants functional ability. Following these measures participants will be invited to be interviewed to discuss their experience of taking part in the study. Approximately one month after discharge, a researcher will visit the participant to repeat measures of their functional ability at their home.

Conditions