Developing the ‘Gearbox Tool of Transitional Care’ (GTTC): a teaching tool designed to teach students as well as team members new to transitional care of older adults

This article describes the contributions to knowledge development and clinical practice during the author’s first year in the role of transitional care practitioner within a rural county setting in England, the UK. The development of a transitional care training tool was deemed essential as the author found that the definition and or constituent stages of transitional care seemed to differ among practitioners, social services, frailty teams and emergency care departments.  The author enrolled on the Mary Seacole Local Development Programme and set out to develop the proposed teaching tool. The Gearbox Tool for Transitional Care (GTTC) was the result of reflection on practice and consultation with transitional care stakeholder colleagues including university teaching staff and students, social services, established and new starter transitional care practitioners among others.  The Tool consists of the stages of transition from acute care to home and is based on varying degrees of care intensity. Older adults who transition from acute hospital to home are particularly vulnerable: many of them have co-morbidities that impact on their quality of life beyond discharge (Naylor, 2004). According to Moreno (2014), quality transitional care is therefore imperative in addressing the health and social needs of this vulnerable group and in preventing deterioration and or a readmission roller coaster once patients are deemed medically optimised for discharge from acute care.  It is hoped that the proposed GTTC (Takavarasha, 2022) training model is an essential contribution and stimulus into contemporary and improved instruction and orientation in national transitional care debates and pedagogy.