Frailty screening in older hospitalized patients

Hospitals become more and more ‘geriatric institutions’ and in daily practice, nurses have to deal with an increasing number of older patients. When older people with acute health problems are hospitalized, they are at high risk of rapid functional decline both during their hospital stay as well as after discharge. Frailty and functional decline contribute to negative health outcomes. Therefore, an active approach in detecting frailty in hospitalized older patients is considered to be necessary, as a starting point for proactive interventions. This thesis focuses on the screening for frailty in daily nursing care for hospitalized older patients. This thesis contains several studies with three aims: (1) generating an overview of available hospital screening tools for frailty and their psychometric properties, (2) obtaining information regarding the quality and usefulness of the Maastricht Frailty Screening Tool for Hospitalized Patients (MFST-HP screening tool), and (3) exploring opinions of hospital nurses on conducting frailty screening.