Recovery coaching in an acute older people rehabiliation ward

Our patient, carer, and staff feedback clearly tells us that elderly patients are frequently disempowered by acute care provision, environments, and attitudes. This debilitates individuals mentally and physically, reducing their independent functioning, and may mean that they require prolonged care or are unfit to return home. We developed the concept of “recovery coaching” to support acute inpatient elderly care rehabilitation. We designed a training intervention to achieve “coaching conversations” between our staff and our patients. Data were collected from 46 participants; 22 in the pre-intervention stage and 24 in the post-intervention stage. For the post-intervention patients, mean scores indicated that there was slightly higher increase in the patient's independence in terms of their Barthel (ADL) scores and that they reported higher feelings of self-efficacy. For this patient group it was also found that more returned home with the same level of care as on their admission, and that fewer patients required residential care placements at discharge. This innovative intervention allowed us to challenge the fundamental basis of “I do it for you” to “I will do it with you”, allowing the patient to become an integral partner in their health care.