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Frailty in primary care

Guest Editors:
Kristiana Ludlow: Centre for Health Services Research, Faculty of Medicine, the University of Queensland, Australia
Natasha Reid: Centre for Health Services Research, Faculty of Medicine, the University of Queensland, Australia
Oliver M Todd: Clinical Lecturer, Academic Unit for Ageing and Stroke Research, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Hakan Yaman: Anatolia Hospital, Hakan Yaman, MD, MS, MS (w/o thesis), miniMBA, Specialist of Family Medicine, Antalya, Türkiye

BMC Primary Care has published this Collection on Frailty in primary care. Frailty is an age-related medical condition of reduced function and physiological reserve, that is of increased relevance in modern primary care due to the increased pace of population ageing. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) report that the proportion of the world’s population over 60 years will double by 2050. Furthermore, in 2050, 80% of older people will live in low or middle-income countries. This means the effective management of age-related conditions such as frailty is ever increasing global importance.

Meet the Guest Editors

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Kristiana Ludlow: Centre for Health Services Research, Faculty of Medicine, the University of Queensland, Australia

Dr Kristiana Ludlow is a health services researcher and Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Services Research, the University of Queensland, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University. Her current research focuses on improving outcomes for frail hospital patients. Her other research interests include missed care and unmet needs in aged care, care prioritization, person-centered care, the role of family caregivers in healthcare, and mental health. Dr Ludlow has expertise in co-design, qualitative research, Q methodology and consumer engagement. She is passionate about collaborating with consumers, service users and workforces to improve the delivery of care across healthcare settings.
 

Natasha Reid: Centre for Health Services Research, Faculty of Medicine, the University of Queensland, Australia

Dr Natasha Reid is an epidemiologist and Research Fellow with the Centre for Health Services Research at the University of Queensland. Natasha specializes in research aiming to understand and influence frailty and quality of life in older adults across settings including long-term care, cancer and acute-care patients, with a particular focus on community-dwelling adults. Having worked across both secondary data analysis and primary data collection and intervention, Natasha’s experience includes complex data analysis as well as both individual and systems-level behavior change strategies. Natasha helps support students at varying levels of their studies in research methodology and data analysis. She sits on a number of committees, including conference organization and early career academic committees at the center and faculty levels.
 

Oliver M Todd: Clinical Lecturer, Academic Unit for Ageing and Stroke Research, University of Leeds, United Kingdom

Oliver Todd is a researcher and a doctor specializing in the care of older people. He has a particular interest in developing better evidence to support the management of hypertension in later life and developing methods in big data epidemiology. He currently serves as a clinical lecturer for the Academic Unit for Ageing and Stroke Research at the University of Leeds.
 

Hakan Yaman: Anatolia Hospital, Hakan Yaman, MD, MS, MS (w/o thesis), miniMBA, Specialist of Family Medicine, Antalya, Türkiye

Dr Hakan Yaman is Professor and former Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Akdeniz in Antalya, Turkey. He is specialized in Family Medicine and is a clinical trainer. Dr Yaman provides clinical services and his research interests are primarily focused on the preventive care of elderly people in Turkey. He has a strong background in travel medicine and injury prevention. He published articles on migration/tourist health in international peer-reviewed journals and gave lectures at international conferences (WONCA) on the prevention of travel injuries and travel medicine in elderly tourists. He worked at different EU-funded studies on injury prevention and safety promotion. He co-authored the “WHO Age-Friendly PHC Toolkit” in 2008.





 

About the collection

BMC Primary Care has published this Collection on Frailty in primary care. In support of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3: Good Health and Wellbeing and SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities, BMC Primary Care welcomed original submissions for our collection Frailty in primary care.

Frailty is an age-related medical condition of reduced function and physiological reserve, that is of increased relevance in modern primary care due to the increased pace of population aging. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) report that the proportion of the world’s population over 60 years will double by 2050. Furthermore, in 2050, 80% of older people will live in low or middle-income countries. This means the effective management of age-related conditions such as frailty is ever increasing global importance.

The provision of primary care to patients with frailty presents many challenges that must be overcome, including making health care services more accessible to frail patients; ensuring that primary care providers demonstrate best practice in the diagnosis, screening, and case management of frailty; and supporting frail patients to follow medical advice and actively participate in interventions.

Despite previous reports documenting efforts to define frailty, establish effective management approaches, and develop appropriate interventions; there is still a lack of understanding on how evidence-based strategies can best be implemented in the primary care setting. As such, we welcome submissions from a broad range of research covering all aspects of frailty management in primary care.

The scope included but was not limited to primary care research that considered frailty in the following topics:

  • Risk factors
  • Preventative measures for frailty
  • Methods for assessing and diagnosing frailty
  • Patient support
  • Qualitative assessments of patient engagement and quality of life, as well as patient, family, caregiver, and primary care provider perspectives on frailty care management
  • Evaluation of health care policy and new primary care models
  • Training health care professionals and developing protocols for ‘best practice’

  • Evidence-based management interventions

Image credit: Chinnapong / Stock.adobe.com

  1. Children and adolescents with complex medical issues need home care services; however, few studies have provided insight into the unmet home care needs of the families of patients with osteogenesis imperfecta ...

    Authors: Xinyi Wang, Yuqing Li, Yaping Zhong, Min Wang, Xuehua Liu, Wenxuan Han, Huifang Chen and Ji Ji
    Citation: BMC Primary Care 2024 25:119
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. Providing primary care for people with frailty can be challenging due to an increased risk of adverse outcomes and use of potentially inappropriate medications which may exacerbate characteristics of frailty. ...

    Authors: T Schneider, B Farrell, S Karunananthan, A Afkham, E Keely, C Liddy and L. M. McCarthy
    Citation: BMC Primary Care 2024 25:104
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. Interprofessional collaboration is recommended in caring for frail older adults in primary care, yet little is known about how interprofessional teams approach end-of-life (EOL) conversations with these patients.

    Authors: Celina Carter, Shan Mohammed, Ross Upshur and Pia Kontos
    Citation: BMC Primary Care 2023 24:225
    Content type: Research Published on:

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Frailty in primary care" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Guest Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Guest Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.