Abstract
Frailty is prevalent among community-dwelling older adults. Community physical and occupational therapists provide at-home care to older adults, yet little is known about their ability to identify frailty, specifically the early development (pre-frailty). Objectives: To explore therapists' perspectives on frailty, and develop a definition of how they view and manage frailty in their practice. Eleven therapists (17.3 ± 12.0 years of experience) completed repertory grid-guided interviews. Principal component analysis identified relationships in data and highlighted themes, and constant comparative analysis built upon emerging themes. Therapists recognized frailty as self-imposed isolation due to reduced motivation, lack of safe judgment, and declining physical fitness resulting in functional dependence. Therapists' image of frailty included deterioration of physical, mental, and social capacities, leading to an inability to thrive. Therapists recognized that the underlying comorbidities contributed to the unique expression of frailty within individual clients. Therapists' distinct perspectives of frailty add to current proposed definitions by establishing early identifiers to enable an effective and useable definition of "what is frail?"
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 270-286 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Physical and Occupational Therapy in Geriatrics |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2011 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We would like to thank Interior Health Authority for facilitating participant involvement. We are so grateful to our participants, who generously donated their time and perspectives. Further, we acknowledge Dr. Joan L Botorff at the Institute for Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention for her insightful comments on the manuscript Declaration of interest: This work was supported by Internal Research Grant, University of British Columbia Okanagan [grant number 62R4552]; British Columbia Network on Aging Research [grant number 62R43319]; and Government of British Columbia-Social Policy and Practice Branch [grant number 62R45463]. Kaitlyn P Roland is funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research and Parkinson Society Canada — Psychosocial Doctoral Award.
ASJC Scopus Subject Areas
- Rehabilitation
- Gerontology
- Occupational Therapy
- Geriatrics and Gerontology