Stakeholders' views and experiences of care and interventions for addressing frailty and pre-frailty: a meta-synthesis of qualitative evidence

Barbara d'Avanzo, Rachel Shaw, Silvia Riva, João Apóstolo, Elzbieta Bobrowicz-Campos, Donata Kurpas, Maria Bujnowska, Carol Holland

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Frailty is a common condition in older age and is a public health concern which requires integrated care and involves different stakeholders. This meta-synthesis focuses on experiences, understanding, and attitudes towards screening, care, intervention and prevention for frailty across frail and healthy older persons, caregivers, health and social care practitioners. Studies published since 2001 were identified through search of electronic databases; 81 eligible papers were identified and read in full, and 45 papers were finally included and synthesized. The synthesis was conducted with a meta-ethnographic approach. We identified four key themes: Uncertainty about malleability of frailty; Strategies to prevent or to respond to frailty; Capacity to care and person and family-centred service provision; Power and choice. A bottom-up approach which emphasises and works in synchrony with frail older people's and their families' values, goals, resources and optimisation strategies is necessary. A greater employment of psychological skills, enhancing communication abilities and tools to overcome disempowering attitudes should inform care organisation, resulting in more efficient and satisfactory use of services. Public health communication about prevention and management of frailty should be founded on a paradigm of resilience, balanced acceptance, and coping. Addressing stakeholders' views about the preventability of frailty was seen as a salient need.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0180127
Number of pages22
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume12
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Jul 2017

Bibliographical note

© 2017 D’Avanzo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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