Awardee: Dr Aruska D’Souza
Title of project: Mobility matters! A head-to-head comparison of two mobility outcome measures in hospitalised older people
Year Awarded: 2023
Year of completion: 2025
Dr D’Souza is a physiotherapist working as the Allied Health Knowledge and Research Translation Lead at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, and Margaret Nayler Physiotherapy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at La Trobe University.
In 2023, Aruska received a grant from the AAG Research Trust RM Gibson Program. The grant funds supported the evaluation of the psychometric properties—including inter-rater reliability, measurement error, floor and ceiling effects, criterion-related predictive validity, convergent validity, known group validity, and responsiveness—of the modified Iowa Level of Assistance (mILOA) in acute patients aged 65 or older admitted to a general medical ward. A prospective observational study employing recommended psychometric techniques was conducted in general medicine at two Australian tertiary hospitals.
Results indicate that the mILOA has excellent inter-rater reliability, convergent validity, and known group validity for discharge destination. It may also predict discharge home (criterion predictive validity) and is responsive to change, with no floor or ceiling effects in acutely hospitalised older adults. The findings support the use of the mILOA as an appropriate outcome measure for older people admitted to a general medical ward.
These results guide outcome measure choices across four health networks, including continued use of the mILOA and de Morton Mobility Index at Royal Melbourne Hospital, the initiation of the de Morton Mobility Measure at Bass Coast Health, and the start of the mILOA at St Vincent’s Hospital, with ongoing evaluations at Western Health. This development has the potential to lead to a ‘data warehouse’ that can support future collaborations and research aimed at enhancing the health of older adults.
Aruska is grateful to the AAG Research Trust for funding this project, stating "As a result of this funding, physiotherapists can be confident in using the mILOA in hospitalised older people. The support has enabled me to make new connections and collaborations with clinicians and researchers which will be beneficial to advancing my research areas and improving outcomes for hospitalised older adults."
In addition, Aruska spoke of the positive impacts of networking at AAG's National Conferences, "I was paired with Dr Sze-Ee Soh at the “Lunch with the Stars” program at the 2022 AAG conference and was able to use this introduction to include Dr Soh as an author in two of the studies to eventuate from this funding. She has provided an invaluable contribution to these studies. I am incredibly grateful for the money, time and efforts that the AAG invests into their early career researchers."