"A really important piece of work demonstrating the use of frailty identification and screening across all of health and social care, and indeed society as a whole.”
James Lee, Nurse Consultant, Older Persons and Frailty, Salisbury Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Background:
Following on from the Wessex AHSN Healthy Ageing acute frailty audit and workshop delivered during 2018/19, local acute trusts have been working on developing key resources to help improve the identification and screening for frailty and providing guidance on best practice for sharing this key information, providing an oversight of where patients living with frailty are located as well as their level of frailty.
Aims of the project:
The aim of the project was to develop a suite of standards to support a consistent approach across Wessex within a hospital setting in identifying and sharing important information about individuals living with frailty.
Deliverables:
The programme and Wessex frailty subject matter experts have developed a suite of downloadable screening resources for use within both acute and social care settings.
The resources have been trialed within Salisbury Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Hampshire County Council Adult Social Care to ensure that the trial the resources standards in a real world setting, developing additional hints and tips to aid implementation within organisations. Implementation resources are available to download for acute settings and social care.
The developed resources were shared with the London Clinical Frailty Network during 2020 to support pandemic response. Additionally, these resources have been included in the Health Education England national frailty offer, https://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/frailty/ as exemplar resources.
Project team contributing to the development of these resources:
- Claire Spice, Consultant Geriatrician, Queen Alexandra Hospital Portsmouth
- James Lee Nurse Consultant, Older Persons and Frailty, Salisbury Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
- Yvonne Banton, Team Lead, Occupational Therapist, Older Person's Therapy and OPAL Team, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust
- Andy Phillips, Interim Deputy Divisional Manager, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust
- Emma Cox, Head of Quality Improvement, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust
- Cheryl Davies, Healthy Ageing Programme Manager, Wessex AHSN
