We think it's important to share our findings

Authors

Smith, S

Age-friendly community projects have been contributing to initiatives across the spectrum of ‘healthy ageing’, ‘active ageing’, ‘productive ageing’ and the many other approaches to support better ageing in all its forms. Louth Age Friendly County Office and the Health Service Executive (HSE) have been supporting and nurturing community groups in this regard since the first Age-Friendly County alliance was set up in Louth in 2008. One such community group is Drogheda District Support 4 Older People (DDS4OP). This report outlines findings from an evaluation of DDS4OP as part of the EU Smart Health Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) project, which aims to improve policies and practices in seven European countries through learning and sharing best practices.

Authors

Smith, S., Carragher, L.

This paper examines elements of recorded GP answering machine messages that may impact on older persons seeking to access out-of-hours GP services. A content analysis approach was used to examine audio recordings of all outgoing answering machine messages from GP practices in two rural counties in Ireland. Both technical and interpretive elements of outgoing answering machine recordings present barriers for older people in accessing doctor-on-call. The information processing ability of older people, often in urgent need when seeking out-of-hours care, may be compromised due to stress, as well as illness or age-related related physical challenges. Answering machine messages, providing care directions, should be created to maximise the potential for older patients to effectively acquire the necessary details to access Doctor-on-Call.

Authors

Moran, O., McHugh, L.

The importance of a healthy sense of self for adolescent mental health is well documented. According to Relational Frame Theory there are three distinct self-discriminations, as well as three corresponding senses of other. Recent evidence suggests that in naturally occurring speech these discriminations are predictive of lower distress, as well as increased well-being, and psychological flexibility. The present study investigates these self and other discriminations in a sample of 76 adolescents using a mixed methods design with opened-ended questions and quantitative measures of mental health, well-being, and experiential avoidance. Participants’ responses to the open ended questions were coded for occurrences of the three senses of self, other, and rule governed behavior using the Functional Self-Discrimination Measure (Atkins & Styles, 2016). The findings indicated that different patterns of relating to the self and others were associated with higher levels of well being, better mental health and higher psychological flexibility. The findings are considered in relation to the benefits of using a behavioral measure of self-relating in adolescents.

Authors

Giggins, OM., Doyle, J., Hogan, K., Geroge, M.

Achieving adequate levels of illumination to stimulate the circadian system can be difficult in a nursing home. The aim of this study was to examine the impact that a 4-week cycled lighting intervention had on activity, sleep, and mood in older adults living in a nursing home.

Authors

Desparis, S., Tommasi, P., Pascale, A., Rifai, H., Doyle, J., Dinsmore, J.

With the increase of multimorbidity due to population ageing, managing multiple chronic health conditions is a rising challenge. Machine-learning can contribute to a better understanding of persons with multimorbidity (PwMs) and how to design an effective framework of care and support for them. We present a risk model of older PwMs that was derived from the TILDA dataset, a longitudinal study of the ageing Irish population. This model is based on a 26-nodes Bayesian network that represents patients possibly having one or more chronic conditions among diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and arthritis, through a joint probability distribution of demographic, symptomatic and behavioral dimensions. We describe our method, give an exploratory analysis of the risk model, and assess its prediction accuracy in a cross-validation experiment. Finally we discuss its use in supporting management of care for PwMs, drawing on comments from health practitioners on the model.

Authors

Smith, S., Carragher, L.

Demographic changes and shifting populations mean growing numbers of older people are living alone in rural areas. General practitioner (GP) out-of-hours (GPOOH) services have an essential role in supporting older people to remain living in their own homes and communities for as long as possible, but little is known about use of GPOOH services by this cohort. This research examines how rurality impacts accessibility and utilisation of GPOOH services by people aged 65 years or more in rural Ireland.

Authors