Up against a challenge of providing pre-discharge resources for family carers of older patients: The process of developing a user-friendly eLIP website

Abstract

Background: Against the dilemmas arising from the multiple concerns of providing timely, appropriate and relevant care for older persons following discharge from hospital, this 4-year study aims to examine the effects of an eLearning Information Package (eLIP) for hospitalised older people and families to make decisions about discharge locations.

Objective: This presentation describes an interim phase that used the qualitative data collected from elders, families and nurses in the phase one study, which identified the needs and challenges confronting them when planning older patients for discharge, to then undergo a process of developing a nurse-led, user-friendly and interactive eLIP website for family carers.

Methods and theoretical underpinnings: The content of the website is underpinned by the Ottawa Decision Support Framework (ODSF) which composes of three components: decisional needs, decision support and decision quality. Additionally, a set of guidelines was used to guide the development of user-centred website design and thereby obtained information about user/web interaction.

Results: We have managed to integrate the first two components of the ODSF framework into the eLIP website by creatively using the qualitative findings to heighten family carers awareness and understanding of the elders’ needs, and to help them think ahead and consider options in managing the elder’s situation before discharge. Decisional support was provided by developing new, as well as consolidating and integrating existing elderly resources into the website and then helping families to become familiar with resources that are available for their consideration. We will present our challenges of designing eLIP that attempted to address the multiple needs of elders, and how we prioritized and selected from our qualitative findings, and our choice of existing elderly resources to include.

Conclusions: eLIP hopes to become an interactive pre-discharge hospital package for older people by providing timely, appropriate and relevant information to family carers during a very stressful time. Its effectiveness in supporting families of older people during the pre-discharge period has yet to be determined, and will be tested in phase 2 of the study.