N.B. Research Team Is Investigating The Impact Of Standing For Frail Individuals
A team of New Brunswick researchers is working together to determine if something as simple as standing makes a difference in functional ability and quality of life for frail older adults.
The team worked with individuals in four nursing homes in the province, including two in Fredericton and two in Moncton.
“This is a research project that was designed for level three care homes, in which the majority of residents are ambulating in wheelchairs,” said Kendra Cooling, a graduate student with the University of New Brunswick.
The 90 participants were divided into two groups: those who stood while taking part in social activities and those who did so while seated. Beginning in April 2019, the research team ran the intervention aiming to have some participants stand a total of 100 minutes per week while participants in the control group received the same amount of contact with the research staff when sitting.
Cooling was the lead staff in Moncton under the supervision of Dr. Grant Handrigan from the Université de Moncton and Molly Gallibois, another graduate student at UNB under the supervision of Dr. Bouchard, was the lead staff in Fredericton. They and many other graduate students visited the nursing homes from Monday through Friday to work with participants.
“We decided that 20 minutes per day in bouts of 10 minutes was the amount of standing time participants would do, based on a pilot study performed in 2018 that has shown that amount to be feasible in most cases,” said Cooling.
The sessions took place every morning, then again in the afternoon.
“Because the physical abilities varied across participants, for a lot of the program we did actually offer them one session of 20 minutes where they could still take breaks but push themselves a little bit more,” said Cooling.
They finished working with the participants in January and the team is now going through the data. They need to consider a lot of factors in their analysis including the age of individual participants, as well as any baseline deficits and cognitive abilities.
The preliminary data shows that the intervention is well accepted by participants, family members and staff, and led to many perceived benefits including a positive impact on levels of loneliness. However, changes in the physical outcomes measured did not support the benefits of this type of intervention. Because of the large variability in the characteristics of participants, it is possible that the tests and questionnaires used did not capture the perceived benefits.
On top of the quantitative data collected, said Gallibois, they also did interviews with participants, their family members and staff at the nursing homes. Overall responses were positive.
“Some staff even mentioned that they were able to see improvements, such as being able to help transition the residents from sitting to standing came a little bit easier,” she said. “One of the goals, whenever we do these projects, is how can we make this so it can last in the long term. That was a big reason why we were trying to find an exercise implementation that is simple so that participants would be able to do this and staff would be able to help them.”
Besides Cooling and Gallibois under the research team co-leads Dr. Bouchard and Dr. Handrigan, the research team includes Linda Caissie from St. Thomas University, Pam Jarret from Dalhousie School of Medicine in Saint John, Chris McGibbons, Martin Sénéchal, Jeff Hebert and Emily Read from UNB.
The project is funded by the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation and the Canadian Frailty Network.