The Southampton Mealtime Assistance Roll-out Trial (SMART)

University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust

Status: Completed

Conditions: Volunteer Mealtime Assistants

Treatments: Behavioral: Volunteer mealtime assistance

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02229019

14/LO/1363 (Other Identifier)

MED1203

Details and patient eligibility

About

The Southampton Mealtime Assistance Study aims to determine whether it is feasible and acceptable to introduce trained volunteers as mealtime assistants in five different departments of one large hospital.

Enrollment: 258 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 70+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Patients over the age of 70 years admitted to one of the wards under study

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with active bowel pathology
• Patients in the terminal phase of their life
• Patients who are artificially fed (parenterally or enterally)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

258 participants in 1 patient group

Volunteer mealtime assistance

Experimental group

Description:

Trained volunteers will provide mealtime assistance to older hospital inpatients at one mealtime each weekday.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Volunteer mealtime assistance