Interprofessional Collaboration Between Nurses and Occupational Therapists Enhances Independence and Reduces Disposable Absorbent Product Use in Older Patients.
Ken Kondo, Naoto Noguchi, Ryoto Akiyama and 6 others
Older hospital patients who received a one-time nurse-OT collaboration meeting showed significantly greater ADL improvement and lower absorbent product use at discharge than matched controls.
Physical restraint use fell in both groups with no between-group difference.
Key findings
1The intervention group showed significantly greater improvement in FIM total, motor, and cognitive scores at discharge, with the FIM gain total mean difference of 13.3 points (95% CI 8.309 to 18.269) on a 126-point scale.
2Disposable absorbent product use at discharge was significantly lower in the intervention group (19 of 45, 42.2%) than in the historical control group (30 of 45, 66.7%), a within-group reduction not seen in the control group.
3Physical restraint use decreased significantly in both groups (22 of 45 to 12 of 45 in controls; 21 of 45 to 10 of 45 in the intervention group), but the between-group difference at discharge was not significant (p = 0.624).
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What it does not show
Single facility, so results may not transfer to other wards or countries. Historical controls were from a different time period (2020 to 2022 vs 2022 to 2023), and the pandemic restricted rehabilitation access during the control period, which may have lowered their baseline function. The intervention group stayed longer in the ward (41.8 days vs 26.3 days), partly due to cluster infections, which could inflate the absolute FIM gain. The collaborative practice intervention was delivered only once during the hospital stay. The study was not randomised; propensity score matching reduced but did not eliminate confounding.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The study was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant 22K17540), a government research body.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the absorbent product reduction as proof that a single nurse-OT meeting will work in any ward. The study is single-centre, non-randomised, and the control group was drawn from a different two-year period when pandemic restrictions limited rehabilitation access. The physical restraint outcome showed no between-group difference, and the intervention was delivered only once per patient. The longer hospital stay in the intervention group (41.8 vs 26.3 days) may also inflate the absolute FIM gain.
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