Frailty in the clinical practice of nursing care

Abstract

A number of aspects will be discussed with regard to frailty in hospitalised elderly patients and the role played by nurses. With regard to frailty, several definitions and operationalisations are used that may have an influence when frailty is used for case-finding. Frailty is related to disability and comorbidity and may occur more or less often in specific groups of patients. It is not clear whether information obtained from significant others is useful for assessing a patient's frailty and determining whether nurses of non-geriatric wards have sufficient experience to determine the specific problems of frail elderly people. Geriatric interventions have shown positive results with regard to frail elderly people. It can be studied whether an intervention with a central role for the Geriatric Nurse Specialist will also have a positive effect in frail elderly people and whether the RE-AIM model is useful in evaluating the intervention study undertaken.