The Ageing and Dementia research group develops and evaluates interventions to improve care and support independent living and quality of life when older people have complex health needs. Our work focuses on health issues that commonly affect quality of life in old age e.g. dementia, frailty, multimorbidity, incontinence, and hearing loss. We engage with patients’, residents’ and families’ experiences and conduct research to inform the delivery of safe, compassionate, person-centred and integrated care to these populations at risk of poor life quality.
Our research group is a vibrant and interdisciplinary community, including clinical academics, health services researchers, social scientists and operational researchers. We have strong collaborations with NHS, social care and the communities of older people our research aims to support, and these relationships inform and shape our research. We collaborate with other leading research teams, and have secured over £3.5 million of national and international funding to further our research. Our commitment to developing career pathways in care research has resulted in awards of >£700k (NIHR, Alzheimer’s Society) to establish a doctoral training centre in dementia care and a large cluster of postgraduate students and early career researchers. Our unique bridging fellow scheme has supported our postgraduates to transition to research careers, thus ensuring our continuing investment in future research leaders.
Our findings draw attention to the inequalities of older people’s care and we work closely with policy-makers and care providers to ensure that our findings inform the development and delivery of future care.
Our research feeds directly into the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes on offer at the School of Health Sciences, to prepare the health and social care workforce to manage the complexities of caring for people with complex health conditions, and to deliver high quality care aligned to the goals of individual people.
In this inaugural lecture, Professor Jackie Bridges draws on her research and professional experiences to discuss what older people need from health services and to identify what it takes to provide high quality health care to older people with complex needs. An analysis of the organisational conditions in which health care workers, especially nurses, can provide good care is used to set out an agenda for practice, policy, research and education in this important field.
Staff member |
Primary position |
Ruth Bartlett | Associate Professor |
Ann Bowling | Visiting Professor |
Jackie Bridges | Professor of Older People's Care |
Carole Fogg | Senior Research Fellow |
Jo Hope | Lecturer |
Katherine Hunt | Lecturer |
Kellyn Lee | Research Fellow |
Paula Libberton | Principal Teaching Fellow |
Euan Sadler | Associate Clinical Professor |
Dawn-Marie Walker | Associate Professor |
Bronagh Walsh | Associate Professor |
Bartlett, R., & Brannelly, T. (2019). On being outdoors: how people with dementia experience and deal with vulnerabilities. Social Science & Medicine, 235, 1-8. [112336]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.05.041
Bartlett, R., Balmer, A., & Brannelly, T. (2017). Digital technologies as truthbearers in healthcare. Nursing Philosophy, 18(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1111/nup.12161
Bridges, J Collins, P Flatley, M Hope, J & Young, A (2020) Older people's experiences in acute care settings: systematic review and synthesis of qualitative studies. International Journal of Nursing Studies 102, 103469. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.103469
Bridges, J Griffiths, P (joint 1st authors), Oliver, E & Pickering, R.M. (2019) Hospital nurse staffing and staff-patient interactions: an observational study. BMJ Quality & Safety 28(9), 706-13.
Bridges J, Pickering RM, Barker H, Chable R, Fuller A, Gould L, Libberton P, Mesa-Eguiagaray I, Raftery J, Aihie Sayer A, Westwood G, Wigley W, Yao G, Zhu S & Griffiths P (2018). Implementing the Creating Learning Environments for Compassionate Care (CLECC) programme in acute hospital settings: a pilot RCT and feasibility study. Health Services and Delivery Research, 6, 33.
Corbett, T., Cummings, A., Lee, K., Calman, L., Fenerty, V., Farrington, N., Lewis, L., Young, A., Boddington, H., Wiseman, T., Richardson, A., Foster, C., Bridges, J. (2020). Planning and optimising CHAT&PLAN: a conversation-based intervention to promote person-centred care for older people living with multimorbidity. PLOS One. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240516
Evenden, D., Brailsford, S., Kipps, C., Roderick, P., & Walsh, B. (2020). Computer simulation of dementia care demand heterogeneity using hybrid simulation methods: improving population-level modelling with individual patient decline trajectories. Public Health, 186, 197-203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2020.07.018
Fogg, C, Meredith, P, Culliford, D.J. Bridges, J, Spice, C, Field, L & Griffiths, P (2020) The association between ward staffing levels, mortality and hospital readmission in older hospitalised adults, according to presence of cognitive impairment: a retrospective cohort study. Age and Ageing. afaa133, https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afaa133
Hunt, K., Bernal , J., Worth, R., Shearn , J., Jarvis , P., Jones, E., Lowe, K., Madden, P., Barr, O., Forrester-Jones , R., Kroll, T., McCarron, M. O., Read, S., & Todd, S. (2019). End-of-life care in intellectual disability: a retrospective cross-sectional study. BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjspcare-2019-001985
Hunt, K.J., May, C.R., 2017. Managing expectations: cognitive authority and experienced control in complex healthcare processes. BMC Health Services Research 17 (1), 459.
Sadler, E., Potterton, V., Anderson, R., Khadjesari, Z., Sheehan, K., Butt, F., Sevdalis, N., & Sandall, J. (2019). Service user, carer and provider perspectives on integrated care for older people with frailty, and factors perceived to facilitate and hinder implementation: a systematic review and narrative synthesis: a systematic review and narrative synthesis. PLoS ONE, 14(5), 1-25. [e0216488]. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216488
Sadler, E., Hawkins, R., Clarke, D. J., Godfrey, M., Dickerson, J., & Mckevitt, C. (2018). Disciplinary power and the process of training informal carers on stroke units. Sociology of Health & Illness, 40(1), 100-114. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12625