People Living With Frailty

Thanks to funding from the Burdett Trust for Nursing, in 2019 the QNI funded ten nurse-led projects in the community focused on people living with frailty.

Each project received up to £5000 and a year-long programme of support from QNI staff, including workshops and site visit.

Please note, the closing date for applications has now passed.

Here is a brief outline on each project, you can download the Summary report below.

Tai Chi for Increased Wellbeing
Outline: This project set out to improve the well-being of people living with frailty in a care home, by attending weekly Tai Chi classes over 10 months, in order to reduce falls and improve balance.

Darwen Healthcare Frailsafe project
Outline: This project involved a robust frailty review of patients scoring high on the electronic frailty index and to screen admissions and out of hours calls that relate to conditions that may be associated with frailty.

Improved Nutrition and Hydration in a Residential Care Home
Outline: This project aimed to improve the health of residents in a care home. The residents have dementia and other long term conditions and are at risk of malnutrition. This increases their risk of falls, delirium and hospital admission.

Royal Voluntary Service Health and Wellbeing Community Hub
Outline: This project aimed to help combat loneliness and isolation with the frailest and most vulnerable people within the community and to provide a stimulating and safe environment where they can attend weekly to gain friendship, company, along with health promotion, advice and treatment from health care professionals to keep them safe and well at home. This would ultimately prevent the misery of loneliness which exacerbates physical illness.

Primary Care Frailty project
Outline: The project aimed to develop a robust system that supports the identification, assessment and management for people identified as severely frail within 3 GP practices and move from a reactive disease driven model to a healthy ageing model, achieve a reduction in unnecessary admissions to hospital and reduce unnecessary GP appointments. This would also invest and prepare the primary care nursing workforce and associated allied health professionals to meet the demands of an ageing population.

Identifying Frailty in Former Carers of Patients who have Entered Permanent Nursing Care from the Robinson Hospital in the Causeway Locality of NHSCT
Outline: To identify frailty in former carers using the Rockwood Clinical Frailty tool when a relative/loved one has been admitted to permanent nursing care.

Reaching Out to the Hard to Reach
Outline: This project aimed to improve and make more equitable the service offered from the General Practice and to review and improve the provision of long term condition monitoring for people who are housebound.

Nurse-led Case Management of Patients with Frailty and Multimorbidity (Frailty Case Management)
Outline: The project aimed to quantify the cost effectiveness of targeted nurse led management to provide evidence that working differently can help manage the growing demand on a GP’s time, reduce hospital admissions, decrease prescribing and social care costs and improve patient experience.

Wound and Pressure Ulcer Prevention and Management using Digital imaging in Practice
Outline: The introduction of digital wound imaging with a 3D digital camera enabling wound size and depth to be measured, together with the ability to map and monitor progress over time.

Stockport COPD Advice on Reviewing Care in Patients with Frailty (SCARF)
Outline: Improve management and health outcomes by filling the gap in provision of care for people with frailty and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who reside in a residential/nursing /care home setting and to improve their management pathway through improving the education for the carers.

To read about the projects in detail, please download the Summary below: