Supporting our frail patients: We need your help

At EEAST we are undertaking a survey to understand how we can better help further support frail patients and their families.

Reducing avoidable conveyance of frail patients to the ED, where there are dedicated services/pathways available to support them at home or in the community, is something we should be trying to do, but often it can be difficult to assess a patient’s frailty and understand what the best course of action may be.

We want to help make this process easier for both you, and our patients, through providing you with the training and support to take appropriate decisions around frailty, and also work with our system partners to provide clearer patient pathways so everyone understands the options that are available. 

In order to do this, we need to understand what is already happening when it comes to caring for our frail patients. Please take a few minutes to complete the frailty survey to help us understand:

• Current frailty pathways within EEAST
• Barriers to referring frail patients
• How often we see frail patients
• How we define frailty
• What training and support HCPs would like
• Use of the clinical frailty score
• How we can better support frail patients and their families

 

The survey is based on similar research carried out by East Midlands Ambulance Service, who then went on to use the findings to strengthen their support and training for staff around caring for frail patients.

The survey will be open until the end of May and you can complete it here. It should take no more than ten minutes.

Thank you for your time.  

Published 11th May 2022