RIPE Project: Researching Interventions that Promote Ethics in Social Care
Overview
Recently there has been increasing acknowledgement of the need for good practice and ethical care for people in care homes. In this exciting research project, we aim to find out what kinds of ethics education work to promote good care for older people in care homes.
The RIPE project is a pragmatic cluster randomised trial – the project measures the impacts of three different kinds of ethics education. The research involves 28 care homes, with eight staff from each care home (and the home manager) participating in one of four arms of the project.
The RIPE Project has now been extended to conduct immersive simulations in domilicary settings.
Read Ann Gallagher and Anna Cox's RIPE Project article, published in the Working Papers in the Health Sciences.
Aims and objectives
The four arms of the project are:
- Conventional ethics teaching at the home
- Reflective ethics teaching at the home
- Simulated ethics learning at the University of Surrey
- No intervention – the control group
All care staff participants will complete a survey about ethics that includes four measures of ethical sensitivity and decision making. To understand the impact of the interventions, the survey will be completed three times across the project. Some participants will also be interviewed.
This research has been favourably reviewed by the University of Surrey Ethics Committee.
Funder
Team
Dr Anna Cox
Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care
Professor Ann Gallegher
Head of Nursing and Professor of Care Education, Ethics and Research - University of Exeter
Dr Magdalena Zasada
Lecturer in Workforce, Organisation and Wellbeing
Outputs
Current RIPE Project Papers
Current papers published on the findings from the RIPE project
- Gallagher, A, Peacock, M, Williams, E, Zasada, M, Cox, A. (2020) Findings from a mixed‐methods pragmatic cluster trial evaluating the impact of ethics education interventions on residential care‐givers. Nursing Inquiry
- Gallagher A, Peacock M, Cox A (2020) Exploring the experiences of domiciliary caregivers simulating the role of care recipients. Nursing Standard
- Gallagher et al, Care-givers' reflections on an ethics education immersive simulation care experience: A series of epiphanous events - Nursing Inquiry
- Gallagher & Leng, Care assistants' experiences of an ethics-in-care simulation project: letters to a friend, available at British Journal of Healthcare Assistants