Person-Centred Emergency Care Outcome Measurement For Older People Living with Frailty

Introduction

Health outcome goals are the results individuals seek from healthcare. These may incorporate holistic themes including function, mood, and quality of life. People living with frailty have poorer outcomes from even short hospital stays. They benefit from person-centred, goal-directed care over protocol-driven pathway approaches. This could be improved by monitoring attainment of health outcome goals.

Methods

A systematic review for older people’s health outcome goals in emergency care was conducted using narrative synthesis. A qualitative study based on grounded theory expanded the outcome framework to include people living with frailty. People with cognitive and communication barriers were included in semi-structured interviews. Discussions focussed on the events and outcomes sought from emergency care.

Results

Older people’s health outcome goals for emergency care were classified as efficient and comprehensive care, sensitivity towards vulnerability, and person-centred informed care. The importance of understanding individual perceptions was explicit. Research generally recruited based on age rather than physiological and functional state, and did not assess for impact of frailty on healthcare perceptions. The interview study was paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Initial results showed a predominance of person-centred and holistic care themes among health outcome goals. Participants’ most common goal for emergency care was relief of symptoms: people often had pain. Participants mostly had severe frailty and wanted their mobility to be assessed, with goals of recovering their functional baseline. While participants had confidence in healthcare professionals and were generally willing to “do as we are told to feel better”, they expected to undergo at least basic tests in order to receive a working diagnosis for their problem. People wanted to understand their illness and for explanations to be communicated to their relatives. Next steps Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) for this range of emergency care outcomes are being identified for field-testing in acute settings.