Eat walk engage: an interdisciplinary collaborative model to improve care of hospitalized elders

High-quality, efficient health care for older patients is a priority for health care systems. Acute Care for Elders units improve outcomes but there is a need for generalizable models of care that adopt the principles pioneered in these units. This report describes Eat Walk Engage, a collaborative care model on a general medical ward in Brisbane, Australia. The model focused on early mobilization, feeding assistance, and cognitive stimulation. Using the Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services implementation framework, the facilitation team enabled the clinical team to recognize barriers and develop solutions. Challenges included unclear responsibility, workload concerns, and risk aversion. Implementation strategies included engaging champions, education, audit and feedback, task delineation and delegation, improving physical resources, and workforce redesign. During the first 18 months, audits showed improved nursing documentation in targeted domains and improved performance of mobilizing and cognitive strategies; length of stay for older inpatients fell by 3 days on the intervention ward.