Older people’s perception of being frail – a qualitative exploration

Review written by Dr Mariana Wingood info

Key Points

  1. Older adults defined frailty as an individual who is unable to complete physical tasks.
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BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE

Frailty is a decline in reserve that increases an individual’s vulnerability to stressors, is associated with numerous negative health-related consequences, including falls, fractures, disability, and dementia (1).

Beyond the general agreement of a decline in reserve, there is little agreement of what frailty is, for example, within physical therapy, a common method used to define frailty is Fried’s phenotype, which consists of five elements:

  1. Unintentional weight loss
  2. Muscle weakness
  3. Exhaustion
  4. Slow walking speed
  5. Inactive lifestyle (2).

However, this does not address other forms of frailty including cognitive frailty, financial frailty, social frailty, etc. Furthermore, there is incongruity between older adults being identified as frail and feeling frail.

The objective of this paper was to explore the understanding of older people about the meaning of frailty and the potential consequences of being classified as frail.

Frailty is associated with numerous negative health-related consequences, including falls, fractures, disability, and dementia.
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These findings highlight the importance of physical therapists taking the time to define what frailty is, how the patient is frail, factors increasing the patients’ level of frailty or risk of frailty, and how they can prevent, manage, or reverse their level of frailty.

METHODS

Design: Used data from a process evaluation of a complex intervention that was embedded within the Home-based Extended Rehabilitation of Older people (HERO) randomized control trial.

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