PhD Completion Seminar - Nina Leggett
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PhD thesis title: "Digital Health to Assist Recovery After Critical Illness"
Abstract
There is a current disconnect between the profound, long-lasting effects of an intensive care unit (ICU) admission on survivors, and the availability of evidence-based recovery programs to support survivors. Evidence published during this PhD program provide novel evidence regarding the challenges of navigating transitions in care following an ICU admission, from the perspectives of healthcare users and providers. Further, this thesis provides new data related to the feasibility of digital health interventions to support this vulnerable population. Two systematic reviews conducted during this PhD summarise the current post-ICU interventions for ICU survivors and the implementation factors for digital health interventions. These reviews determined that non-hospital-based models of follow-up care are more feasible to deliver than hospital based, and that digital health interventions are feasible for ICU survivors, respectively. This thesis includes two qualitative studies which investigated the transitions of care from the ICU to primary care, from the perspectives of ICU clinicians, General Practitioners, patients and carers. These studies present new themes related to the fragmentation of care, and poor communication between clinicians leading to poor outcomes. Clinician and patient-derived solutions are presented to improve communication and care delivery, including several digital health interventions, ready for future testing. A prospective cohort study was completed which investigated access to next generation technologies, and digital health literacy of minority ICU survivor groups. This study determined that digital health interventions are appropriate to be developed and tested in ICU survivor group, demonstrating sufficient access and digital health literacy in older adult, culturally and linguistically diverse, and rural ICU survivor population groups. Finally, a pilot feasibility randomised controlled trial was completed, to test a Telehealth peer support program for ICU survivors. This trial demonstrated feasibility across all pre-specified targets, and secondary outcome measure results indicated trends towards improved patient-reported health outcomes. This thesis and included studies builds the science of telehealth and tele-rehabilitation in a critical care cohort, and provides digital health solutions ready for next-phase testing, which may improve outcomes for future ICU survivors.
PhD Completion Seminar
Join us on Tuesday 29th of April at 2:00 - 3:00 pm to learn more from Nina about her project.
