Making Drinking Fun
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Making Drinking Fun. Creating a pro-drinking environment: developing and testing an innovative low-cost activity-based intervention (pro-drinking activities toolkit) to support care home residents in keeping hydrated
IRAS ID
195721
Contact name
Lee Hooper
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of East Anglia
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN14741432
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 0 days
Research summary
International and UK evidence suggests that 20% of older care-home residents are dehydrated (not drinking enough to maintain hydration and health) and more are verging on dehydration. Dehydration increases risks of mortality and disability. As we get older we are less likely to feel thirsty, so we lose our internal signal that we need to drink more. This means that conscious decisions to drink plenty, environmental reminders and finding ways around barriers to drinking, are key to adequate fluid intake. Finding enjoyable ways to encourage this is the focus of this study.\n\nCare-home residents tell us we must explain to residents and staff why drinking is crucial, and provide clear, consistent prompts – a “pro-drinking” environment. We will work with care-home residents, activity co-ordinators and care-staff to make drinking fun, and to create a varied, interesting, potentially low-cost, intervention package to support “pro-drinking” environments in residential and nursing care-homes. This intervention will be an enjoyable drinking-focussed activities programme (the pro-drinking activities toolkit) supporting engagement, activity and mental health which can make drinking fun for residents and staff.\n\nOnce developed, we will try out the intervention in three care-homes, to find out if it is acceptable and practical. We will find out whether there are potential effects on resident engagement, cognition, mood, drinking and hydration, and be able to assess whether it will be realistic to try out Making Drinking Fun in a full scale randomised controlled trial (RCT). \n
REC name
South Central - Hampshire A Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/SC/0017
Date of REC Opinion
17 Feb 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion