About the project

Older adults represent the largest group that receives acute healthcare services and emergency department admissions. Patient transitions can be complex, confusing, challenging and stress-inducing. Older adults experienced challenges in patient transitions due to comorbidity (multiple life-threatening diagnosis), must relate to several healthcare personnel, atypical symptoms, dependency, complex care needs, polypharmacy in addition to delayed assessment and diagnostics. The healthcare service lacks proper tools for assessment and treatment of acutely ill older adults.

The project aims to identify relevant interventions for acutely ill older adults transitioning between nursing homes and emergency departments. By researching healthcare professional experiences from nursing homes, ambulance, out of hours primary care and emergency department in addition to experiences from nursing home residents and their close family, this project aims to identify the following: What happens? What works? What doesn`t work? Which relevant interventions can promote a promising practice in patient transitions between nursing homes and emergency departments?

The project has a qualitative design with individual interviews for method. Hermeneutic method will be applied in analyzing the data using thematic analysis developed by Braun & Clarke.

This project is a part of a larger project titled: «From Knowledge to Action» (K2A), financed by the Research Council of Norway

Background

Master clinical health- and caring science

Research group

Quality and innovation in the health care services

Comparative services research