Patient Experience of CFS-assessment in the ED

NCT ID: NCT06621290

Last Updated: 2024-11-12

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Total Enrollment: 21 participants
• Study Classification: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2024-09-30
• Study Completion Date: 2024-11-05

Brief Summary

An increasingly common subject of interest among emergency care research is frailty, which is commonly described as a decline in several inter-related physiological systems, in addition to an increased vulnerability to stressors. To increase emergency care staffs ability to intervene appropriately in patients who need interventions to improve their outcomes, geriatric emergency care guidelines include recommendations to identify frailty during the emergency department (ED) visit. However, the patients´ experience of frailty assessment in general is sparsely investigated, and such studies within the ED context are even more limited.

It is conceivable that the patients experience of a frailty assessment may differ depending on several different factors, including which assessment tool is used.

A large number of assessment tools have been developed to help identify frailty, of which the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) is one of the most widely used. The CFS has been validated for persons ≥65 years of age and has been evaluated for validity, reliability and feasibility in an ED-setting. The CFS consists of pictograms combined with clinical descriptions of a persons level of functioning in daily life and cognitive status. Hence, to determine the CFS-score, the healthcare staff needs to ask the patient about their physical activity and function level regarding instrumental and personal activities of daily living (eg, banking, shopping, medication management, housekeeping, dressing and hygiene matters).

Since the different questions are often not directly linked to the patients acute illness, but touch on personal subjects like the persons abilities and life situation, it is desirable to understand the patients experience of such an assessment in order to optimise the approach from a patient perspective. To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies that focus on how patients experience being assessed with CFS during their ED-visit.

The aim of this study is therefore to inform a model to guide emergency department staff in assessing frailty with CFS, directed by the perspective from patients along the frailty trajectory. Specifically, our question is:

• How do older ED-patients experience the frailty assessment with the CFS?

Detailed Description

With the nature of qualitative data, a definitive sample size cannot be determined in advance. An estimate is that data will need to be collected for 15-25 patients. The analysis is planned to start in parallel with the data collection, and when no further significant findings are made during the progress of the analysis, the data collection will end. To ensure study quality, a reflexive approach and data-/researcher triangulation will be applyed.

Conditions

Frailty in Aging; Emergency Department Visit; Patient Experience; Qualitative Research

Study Design

• Observational Model Type: OTHER
• Study Time Perspective: CROSS_SECTIONAL

Study Groups

Patients over the age of 65 visiting the ED

Patients over the age of 65 visiting the ED who is capable of giving informed consent and who are planned to participate in a frailty assessment

Semi-structured interviews

Intervention Type: OTHER

Semi-structured interviews on ED-patients experiences of frailty assessment with the CFS

Interventions

Semi-structured interviews

Semi-structured interviews on ED-patients experiences of frailty assessment with the CFS

Intervention Type: OTHER

Other Intervention Names

Qualitative research

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Patients aged ≥ 65 years attending the ED, and who gives informed consent to participating in the study.
• Emergency department staff will be included if they are to perform a CFS assessment on a patient eligible for the study.

Exclusion Criteria

• Patients who lack cognitive capacity to give informed consent, or have an acute medical condition will be excluded from the study. Exclusion will also apply to patients who do not speak Swedish and where an interpreter cannot be arranged (the patients next of kin will not be used as an interpreter).

• Minimum Eligible Age: 65 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Sponsors

University Hospital, Linkoeping

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Daniel Wilhelms

MD PhD

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Daniel Wilhelms, PhD, MD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Department of Emergency Medicine in Linköping, and Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

Locations

Department of emergency medicine, Linköping University Hospital, Region Östergötland, Linköping

Linköping, Sweden, Sweden

Countries

Sweden

Other Identifiers

2024-03729-01

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id