What this Trial Is About

BACKGROUND: Older patients with frailty have complex support needs. How they manage with daily tasks such as eating and drinking, mobilising, communicating their preferences, and the level of support they need, can vary on a day-to-day basis. They are at risk of rapid loss of functional independence when they are acutely unwell. When older people need input from multiple different professionals, ineffective communication is sadly very common. This leads to disjointed care, and patients becoming frailer and suffering avoidable health complications. One of the problems is that it can be difficult for healthcare professionals to build up a complete picture of a patient from brief verbal handovers and written information in medical records. It is believed that video-recordings capturing the changing functional abilities and support needs of individual patients could improve care-provider communication and support for older people. Smartphones with cameras are now a part of everyday life, and people often tell their stories using photographs and videos. However, video recording patients during care delivery is not commonplace. It is not know how patients and carers feel about being video recorded or whether video recordings improve care. AIM: To explore the perspectives of frail older patients, carers, and clinical staff around video recording during routine clinical care, and to understand how patient videos could impact on communication and care delivery across care transitions. METHODS: The study team will recruit frail, older inpatients, their carers, and clinical staff from a Medicine for the Elderly ward. Over three months, doctors, nurses, and therapists will securely record and view patient videos alongside providing usual care. Videos will capture patients' functional abilities and support needs to inform ongoing assessment and care delivery. The investigators will collect information from patients/ carers/ doctors/ nurses /therapists about their experiences of the video recording intervention through interviews and questionnaires.

I4F: Isla for Frailty Feasibility Study