Above, L-R: Professor Janet McColl-Kennedy (UQ Business School), Professor Nancy Pachana (UQ School of Psychology), Dr Liz Ferrier (UQ Business School), and Dr Hannes Zacher (UQ School of Psychology).
A Brisbane aged care service is taking part in an innovative pilot project with business and psychology academics from the University of Queensland (UQ), which should help build a better understanding of how to deliver person-centred care.
Five researchers from the UQ School of Psychology and the UQ Business School will observe groups of employees and residents from Zion Lutheran Home, in the Brisbane suburb of Nundah, over a period of two weeks to see how they interact, with a view to applying a marketing strategy known as customer co-creation.
Customer co-creation is a strategy based on creating mutually beneficial experiences for businesses and their customers. The approach encourages active participation from customers in an ongoing relationship with the business and the good or services it provides.
“Customer value co-creation in an aged care setting seeks to improve residents’ wellbeing by identifying their preferred roles, activities and interactions,” according to a statement from Lutheran Community Care (LCC), which runs the facility.
“The researchers will observe the roles, activities and interactions the aged care residents have with their service provider (the things or practices they actually do on a regular basis) in order to create and design new interactive opportunities representing their interests.”
LCC hopes the project will improve its delivery of person-centred care, which it defines as “responding to people as individuals, listening to their voice and respecting residents’ choices and decisions”.
LCC’s director of care directions and continuous improvement, Kylie Congram, said the UQ study will investigate how person-centred care can influence customer engagement and satisfaction.
“The project will draw insights which could help shift aged care services away from focusing on function and tasks to creating a sense of wellness and wellbeing for the benefit of clients and staff,” she said.
“This is an important step forward in positioning LCC to respond to consumer directed care and the changing expectations of our clients.”
Lutheran Community Care’s (LCC) CEO, Jacqueline Kelly, said in the statement that she was delighted the organisation’s Nundah aged care service was participating in the pilot study.
“The project will help us become increasingly person-centred focusing on wellness and enablement,” Ms Kelly said.
“LCC wants each resident at our service to have an exceptional experience. LCC is honoured to be working in collaboration with UQ and looks forward to changing people’s experience of ageing through this important research.”
Ms Kelly said LCC was privileged to be working with a “world class, cutting-edge team from the University of Queensland who are leaders in their field”.
UQ Business School Professor of Marketing, Janet McColl-Kennedy, said LCC was the first aged care provider to be involved in customer co-creation.
“The work we are about to start here is very exciting,” Professor McColl-Kennedy said. “This impactful research will provide practical outcomes to deliver clients the services they want in a way they value.”
Home Instead Senior Care notes the pilot research being undertaken by UQ into person centred care or customer co creation. Person centred care is the key driver for our business (since 2005) – improving the quality of life through one on one relationships and helping seniors maintain their independence every day. We can testify to the success and real impact delivering person centred care brings. This is absolutely the way providers will have to move if they are to survive in a consumer driven environment.
Martin – this is not the forum for a thinley veiled ad for a private “nursing agency”. Either add some value to the discussion or pay for an ad like everyone else.
Hi Sandra and Martin, for the record, we (me and Steve Easton, one of our journalists) discussed Martin’s comment before deciding to approve it for publishing. This time anyway! We get comments from time to time that are really just advertisements, not even thinly veiled, with people even giving phone numbers and website addresses for their businesses. We reject these. We decided to approve this one, on this occasion, on the basis that HISC was one of the first private agencies in this country and that perhaps (we didn’t/don’t know for sure), coming out of the United States as a franchise model, they would say they have always had a strong customer focused and quite flexible MO. Whereas in Australia, it’s fair to say that our social care approach has been more prescribed and regulated. In that context, we decided it was a fair call on this occasion to make the point. I don’t believe Martin has made a comment in this way before. If he or anyone else was in the habit of shamelessly spruiking their wares, we wouldn’t be so generous. I hope that helps. And we do have to approve every comment. Sometimes, over the weekend, there might be a day or so’s delay… Keryn Curtis, Editor