Stand if You Can: A Standing Intervention in Long Term Care

University of New Brunswick

Status: Completed

Conditions: Physical Disability; Frailty; Sedentary Behavior

Treatments: Behavioral: Standing

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03796039

CAT2018-15

Details and patient eligibility

About

It is currently unknown if reducing sitting time, an activity that is highly prevalent in frail older adults living in long term care (LTC) facilities, is associated with an improvement in physical capacity such as walking speed. Simple tasks such as walking speed is associated with important outcomes for residents in LTC such as autonomy and hospitalization. The investigators hypothesize that standing an additional 100 minutes per week for 5 months will result in a clinically meaningful improvement in walking speed (0.1m/sec) in LTC residents compared to residents receiving a sitting social activity.

Full description

LTC facilities from Moncton and Fredericton will be recruited, with half of the LTC facilities randomized as the intervention and half as the control group. The investigators are aiming to enrol half of the LTC in Fredericton and half in Moncton. A total of 88 residents (44 in the control group, 44 in the intervention group) will be enrolled in the program.

Enrollment: 97 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Resident at one of the selected LTC facilities;
• Able to provide consent or have a power of attorney agree on behalf of a resident to participate in the study;
• Able to walk for ten meters, with or without a walking aid; The main outcome is walking speed performed for a distance of 10 meters. Therefore, we want everyone who participates in the study to be able to complete the test at baseline. This way we can answer the main research question, while adhering to our sample size calculation.

Exclusion criteria

• If Identified by staff at the facility as too high risk for falling by participating in the intervention.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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97 participants in 2 patient groups

Standing and Social Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Participants be exposed to an additional 100 minutes of standing per week. Participants will do this by standing for 20 minutes Monday through Friday.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Standing

Control Group

No Intervention group

Description:

Control group will receive social visits, but no exposure to standing