Managing Frailty and Delayed Transfers of Care in the Acute Setting: A call to get involved!

Debbie Hibbert  leads on the NHS Benchmarking Network’s community sector benchmarking projects, manages the Delayed Transfers of Care / Older People’s benchmarking projects, is the Project Manager for the National Audit of Intermediate Care (NAIC), and the National Audit of Care at the End of Life (NACEL). She tweets @Debbie_NHSBN 

In this blog, the Managing Frailty and Delayed Transfers of Care in the Acute Setting project is described. Clinicians are encouraged to get involved with this project, the outputs of which include a bespoke report for participants and access to an online benchmarking toolkit. To receive your log in details or for further information, please contact josh.davies@nhs.net.

Driving quality improvements in the care of older people remains a key issue for the NHS as the population of the UK ages. The NHS Benchmarking Network is back with another project following on from previous work on the care of older people, and delayed transfers of care.  The new project continues the Network’s six-year partnership with the BGS and will help our members to gather much needed data to inform service change and future strategic decisions.

July 2018 issue of Age and Ageing journal is out now

The July 2018 issue of Age and Ageing, the journal of the British Geriatrics Society is out now.  A full table of contents is available here, with editorials, research papers, reviews, short reports, case reports book reviews and more.  

Hot topics in this issue include:

• Blood pressure targets in treatment of hypertension
• Falls prevention
• Probiotics and prevention of infection
• Improving healthcare outcomes in care homes
• Caregiver relationships and Parkinson’s disease

The Editor’s View article gives an overview of the issue with a summary of highlights. This article is free to read and can be viewed here.

‘Water, water everywhere’; dehydration in the older population

Janet Gordon & Marie Henson both work for Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. Janet Gordon is a dietitian working in Nutrition Support and is team leader for the adult Nutrition Support Team which is part of Birmingham Community Nutrition. At the time of the study Marie Henson was a Community Nurse team leader in the Kings Heath area of Birmingham, which is where the study took place. This study was presented as a poster at BAPEN Conference 2016 and was published here.

The prevalence of dehydration in older people in the UK has not been widely studied. The UK DRIE Study found 20% of residents in UK long term care were dehydrated. The prevalence in those living at home has not been determined. Dehydration in older people is linked to associated morbidities such as increased falls, confusion, and infections and is a frequent cause of hospitalisation. Clear signs of early dehydration in older people are yet to be determined, but there is a need to identify those at risk of dehydration and intervene early. Systems for recognising those with inadequate fluid intakes, and helping them to drink more, are already in place in many UK hospitals where a red jug scheme identifies those requiring assistance to drink.

May 2018 issue of Age and Ageing journal is out now

The May 2018 issue of Age and Ageing, the journal of the British Geriatrics Society is out now.  A full table of contents is available here, with editorials, research papers, reviews, short reports, case reports book reviews and more.  

Hot topics in this issue include:

• New pain assessment guideline
• Future population burden of
  multimorbidity
• Systemic anti-cancer treatment for
  older people
• Treating malnutrition in care homes
• Effects of different types of
  exercise in older people
• Research methods – diagnostic test
  accuracy studies

The Editor’s View article gives an overview of the issue with a summary of highlights. This article is free to read and can be viewed here.

Health outcome measures for older people

Asangaedem Akpan (tweets at @asanakpan) is an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at the Institute of Ageing & Chronic Disease, University of Liverpool and Geriatrician, who was part of a global network of experts, including older people and carers, that developed a standard set of health outcome measures for older people.

The background to these set of health outcome measures has previously been discussed in a couple of previous blog articles accessible here: part 1 and part 2. Key partner organisations included the International Consortium for Health Outcome Measurements (ICHOM), NHS England and Age UK.

In a recently published open access article we describe how these health outcome measures were developed. In an era of increasing medical sub-specialisation with an increasing number of people with multimorbidity, that proportionately affects older people, a set of health outcome measures that can unify the agendas of health and social care providers, older people and those who pay for health and social care services has the potential to align health and social care services to what matters to people and their carers.

Spring Speakers Series: Promoting Activity, Independence and Stability in early Dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment (PrAISED)

Professor Rowan Harwood is a geriatrician at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, and the University of Nottingham, with particular interests in delirium, dementia and end of life care, who maintains an active portfolio of research. He tweets @RowanHarwood He will be speaking at the upcoming BGS Spring Meeting in Nottingham.

Why diagnose dementia? And why diagnose dementia early? Because we want to do something to make lives better? If so, what?

People living with dementia are vulnerable to a cascade of failing abilities, inactivity, deconditioning and crises from which they may not make a full recovery. Most people living with dementia are, by definition, frail – prone to deterioration and adverse events. The average age of diagnosis is about 85. Ideally early intervention should preserve activity and independence and reduce risk, including risk of the commonest adverse event, falls. Yet the ‘offering’ of health service in response to a dementia diagnosis is painfully thin – cholinesterase inhibitor drugs, cognitive stimulation therapy and a dementia advisor maybe.

New guidelines for recognising and assessing pain in older adults

New recommendations to help healthcare professionals recognise and assess levels of pain in older people were published today in the scientific journal Age and Ageing. The guidelines were developed by the British Geriatrics Society, the British Pain Society, the Royal College of Nursing, in collaboration with researchers at Teesside University, Anglia Ruskin University, University of Bournemouth, Centre for Ageing Better, and the Centre for Positive Ageing.

There is growing evidence to demonstrate that chronic pain is more prevalent among the older population and pain that interferes with everyday activities increases with age. Alleviating pain in the older population is therefore a priority but presents a number of challenges, especially in relation to communication with patients. These guidelines seek to address specific areas in which improvements can be made. To support this aim all existing publications on acute and chronic pain screening and assessment in adults over 60 years of age were identified, and two reviewers independently read and graded the papers according to the National Health and Medical Research Council criteria (1999b).

How (I try!) to avoid a hospital admission for someone with frailty

Dr Amy Heskett is a Speciality Doctor working in a Community Geriatrics team within West Kent called the Home Treatment Service. This team works alongside paramedics, GPs and district nurses to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions for people with frailty, multiple comorbidities, caring responsibilities or as part of end of life care.  The home visits use bedside testing and a multi-disciplinary approach to provide management of many acute medical presentations in a home-setting.  The development of these holistic plans requires a creative approach and the experiences often generate tweets @mrsapea and blogs at communitydoctoramy.wordpress.com

The bag I take on every home visit has numerous pockets with endless equipment and forms required at my fingertips. I clip the same badges and emergency kit to myself at the start of every shift and I take this order and strict routine with me into environments over which I have little control.  It is within this mix of structure and chaos that the creativity to manage conditions and sometimes crises within a community setting arises.

Publications and conferences have explained the importance of avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions (especially for those with frailty) and commissioners require data on the number we have achieved.

The Other “F” Word: Is upstream prevention the way forward for falls?

Steve Parry works in acute medicine and older people’s medicine. He has a special interest in investigation and treatment of falls and blackouts in adult patients of all ages. He is BGS Vice President – Academic and Research.

Since those heady days in the late 90s when our local falls service was started by Rose Anne Kenny, falls services have moved from novelty to mainstream in the UK’s care of older people landscape. But has this service ubiquity made a difference?

Probably. Possibly. Or perhaps not. It’s almost impossible to say. Falls are notoriously poorly recorded and coded, though falls surrogates like hip fracture, the tip of the falls iceberg, provide at least a hard outcome measure universally recorded. Here, however, despite a decade and a half of falls and bone health services, the news is not good.

We must do more to ensure no-one misses out on rehab

Professor Karen Middleton is Chief Executive of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. Karen is a Fellow of the Society of Orthopaedic Medicine, and, in that capacity, has taught physiotherapists and GPs on a national and international basis. Here she discusses the report Recovering after a hip fracture:
helping people understand physiotherapy in the NHS.

It’s the overwhelming feelings of regret and loss that get me. Every time. Whenever I hear a family member say they ‘can only wonder what might have been’ or a patient talking about what they can no longer do.

Whenever I see our Rehab Matters film I know that the fictional story it depicts is playing out in real life, behind closed doors, in homes across the country. It cuts deeply, as a physiotherapist, to hear these stories of how a lack of access to rehabilitation has changed a life.

It makes me burn at the injustice of so many people missing out. Because I know how access to high-quality rehabilitation can change a life for the better – how it can return a person to the things they love, and to the things they do with the people they love. How it can restore independence and a sense of self-worth. How it can restore a life; how it can save a life.