Older People's Perceptions of their Frailty and Future Care Planning
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Are older people able to identify their own frailty status when compared to a frailty screening tool measure? How do frailty perceptions impact the future health care decision making of older people and those closest to them?
IRAS ID
321215
Contact name
Victoria Barber-Fleming
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Edinburgh
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 1 days
Research summary
We want to understand if older people can recognise (or perceive) their own frailty. Further, we want to understand how perceptions of frailty impact future health care planning.
Why?
The clinical definition of frailty is at odds with the public perception of frailty (Britain Thinks, 2015). Health care professionals sometimes make decisions about a patient’s future care based on their frailty status (Rockwood & Theou, 2020). Older people want to be involved in discussions about their future health (Sharp et al., 2013). If older people view frailty differently to their health care professionals, there is the potential that the two groups are not understanding each other properly in relation to a concept that is very important for future health care planning. This presents a risk that older people may not be making informed decisions in relation to their future health and threatens their autonomy.
The Plan
We will ask older people (1000 patients, aged 70 years and over) to complete a survey asking about their views of their own frailty and general health. For most participants, there input will end here. We will compare participants views to a frailty screening tool measure of their frailty available in their GP records. This will help us understand how people perceive their frailty compared to the frailty screening tool.
We will then interview a small number (around 10) of the survey participants with or without a person close to them in the interviews (decided by participant). We aim to understand the older person's and close person's perceptions of frailty and how these perceptions affect future health care planning.
We will speak to GPs across Scotland to ask how they use this frailty screening tool. This will allow us to see the relevance of the tool in everyday GP practice.
REC name
West of Scotland REC 4
REC reference
23/WS/0041
Date of REC Opinion
8 Mar 2023
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion