Mazya Amelie, Boström Anne-Marie, Sandlund Christina, Ekdahl Anne Wissendorff
Division of Clinical Geriatrics, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Department of Geriatric Medicine of Danderyd Hospital, Danderyd, Sweden.
Prim Health Care Res Dev. 2025 Jul 18;26:e61. doi: 10.1017/S1463423625100297.
The aim of this study was to explore primary health care professionals' (PHCP) experiences of frailty assessment with the Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI) with focus on feasibility aspects.
Primary health care (PHC) is often the first point of contact for older people and assessment of frailty is therefore often recommended in this setting. There is however a lack of awareness of frailty in PHC. The TFI has been proposed as a suitable instrument for frailty assessment in PHC. It consists of 25 questions, where ten questions aim to identify risk factors for frailty and 15 questions assess physical, psychological, and social frailty. There are no previous studies of feasibility aspects of TFI in PHC.
A qualitative interview study with physicians, nurses, and physiotherapists that had used TFI in face-to-face interviews during a care visit. Interviews were transcribed and the text was thematically analyzed using qualitative content analysis.
Nine interviews were performed. The PHCPs experiences were expressed in one theme: . TFI was described as easy to use and providing a holistic assessment of the patient. Using the TFI was time-consuming but provided useful information for care planning. In conclusion, the TFI could be a clinically useful tool to assess frailty in PHC. The result indicates a need of educational efforts to increase knowledge about frailty and a need for primary health care to adjust to older people in order to allow care visits to include both assessment and management of frailty.
本研究旨在探讨初级卫生保健专业人员（PHCP）使用蒂尔堡衰弱指标（TFI）进行衰弱评估的经验，重点关注可行性方面。
初级卫生保健（PHC）通常是老年人的首个接触点，因此在这种情况下经常建议进行衰弱评估。然而，初级卫生保健中对衰弱的认识不足。TFI已被提议作为初级卫生保健中衰弱评估的合适工具。它由25个问题组成，其中10个问题旨在识别衰弱的风险因素，15个问题评估身体、心理和社会衰弱。以前没有关于TFI在初级卫生保健中可行性方面的研究。
对在护理访视期间在面对面访谈中使用过TFI的医生、护士和物理治疗师进行定性访谈研究。对访谈进行转录，并使用定性内容分析对文本进行主题分析。
进行了9次访谈。PHCP的经验体现在一个主题中：TFI被描述为易于使用，并能对患者进行全面评估。使用TFI很耗时，但为护理计划提供了有用信息。总之，TFI可能是初级卫生保健中评估衰弱的一种临床有用工具。结果表明需要开展教育工作以增加对衰弱的认识，并且初级卫生保健需要适应老年人，以便护理访视能够包括衰弱的评估和管理。
