Comprehensive geriatric assessment to identify quality of life needs.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Identification of palliative care needs for adults with frailty using hospital based comprehensive geriatric assessment – a multiple case study.
IRAS ID
353853
Contact name
Phoebe Sharratt
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Lancaster University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 5 days
Research summary
Palliative care can be care delivered at the end of someone’s life. Additionally, all people with problems caused by life-limiting illness can receive palliative care. The problems they face may be physical, social, need for home help, and fears about the future. Palliative care tackles these problems to improve a person’s quality of life.
Frailty is a limiting condition. It results from changes due to ageing and medical illnesses. People with frailty are less likely to recover in full from a stressful event e.g. a fall or urine infection. This means they might not be able to do what they were able to before and might need care from others.
There are many ways to assess if people have palliative care problems. Research shows these are not very reliable in frailty. This might be because the impact of even a small event is unpredictable in frailty. This means people can deteriorate without warning.
In hospital, a frail person often receives care from specialists in the care of older people. These specialists usually complete a comprehensive assessment for older people. This is also known as the comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA). CGA involves reviewing all the person's problems. The specialist then makes a plan to help with reversible problems.
Because CGA reviews all a person's problems, this should include palliative care problems. Yet, research has not tested whether it can be used for this purpose. This research aims to show whether CGA identifies palliative care problems, including how and why it does this.
We will use a type of research design called a case study. We will observe CGA taking place. We will gather staff, patient and family member/informal carers' views through interviews. We will review documents related to the assessment, including patient records.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Bradford Leeds Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/YH/0121
Date of REC Opinion
14 Jul 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion