Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences

Better Conversations about Care

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Communication is how we send and receive information.

To communicate we can use speech, listening, writing, gesture, behaviour, facial expression and touch to express our needs, to connect with other people, to make choices, and to tell someone when something is wrong. Many older Australians who receive aged care services have difficulty communicating, but their care workers may not have the tools or resources to support them to express their needs, choices, or concerns.

The Better Conversations About Care Study has been funded by the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF; grant no.: 2015728) to find out what will help support good communication between older people and aged care workers.

The study will be conducted in three stages. You are invited to take part in stage 1. This is a one hour interview about your experiences and perspectives about aged cares services, important conversations about care, and communication difficulties. This will help us in developing and designing resources for use by older people and aged care workers.

Interviews will take around 1 hour, and can be done via zoom online, or (where possible) at a location that suits the person being interviewed.

Eligibility 

We are looking for three key groups of people:

  1. people using aged care services (community or residential) who have communication support needs - find the form here: https://bit.ly/3moYdZk
  2. people supporting a significant other who has communication support needs (their spouse, parent, other family, or friend) and the person they support uses aged care services (community or residential) - find the form here: https://bit.ly/3moYdZk
  3. people who work in direct support (such as support work, personal care services, or nursing) in aged care services (community or residential) and/or aged care service managers - find the form here: https://bit.ly/3Jf2doh

Your experiences must be based on Australian aged care services.

Participant benefits 

A $40 gift voucher to recognise the contribution of your time.

Register your interest 

People can register their interest to be involved through one of the online forms below, or by emailing Michelle King & the research team at our project email - conversationsaboutcareproject@uq.edu.au

  1. People using aged care services and/or significant others - https://bit.ly/3moYdZk
  2. Aged care staff and managers: https://bit.ly/3Jf2doh

This study has been approved by The University of Queensland Human Research Ethics Committee [Approval No.2023/HE000054]