Involving older people in practice development work: An evaluation of an intermediate care service and practice

A shared vision driving a three year systematic practice development strategy within the intermediate care services of one primary care trust in England included an element of facilitating greater user involvement. This particular practice development work demonstrates how service users, in this case older people with intensive rehabilitation needs, were involved in the evaluation work. The evaluation work, comprising four methods (Patient Centreometer Questionnaire, Service Questionnaire, Focus Group and Patient/Carer Stories) was used to facilitate or enable multi-disciplinary practitioners in the practice development group actively to learn through a different form of engagement with older people outside of the usual ‘patient’ and ‘caregiver’ roles. The learning achieved from the process and the evidence obtained through the evaluation methods provided motivation, increased commitment and generated a practice development action plan that enabled changes in practice to be implemented based genuinely on users' experiences. This article also shows how this practice development work moved away from the notion of the baseline and comparative evaluation method to more of an ongoing and integrative method of evaluation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.