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Completed

NCT Number: NCT04869878

Inter-rater Reliability of the Clinical Frailty Scale in a Swedish Emergency Department Setting

Frailty is a common clinical syndrome in older adults, which may be assessed through various assessment tools. One frequently used tool is the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) which potentially can be adopted for daily use in the Emergency Department and has been appraised for reliability to some extent, but have so far not been evaluated in the Swedish emergency care context.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the inter-rater reliability of the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) in a clinical Swedish Emergency Department (ED) setting. Members of multidisciplinary emergency care teams will conduct the assessments individually.

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Key information

Conditions

Frailty Pathologic Processes Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms

Age range

65 year and older

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Observational

Primary location

Akutmottagningen US Östergötland

Linköping, Östergötland County, 58185, Sweden

About this study

The CFS is introduced and tested as part of a quality-improvement process regarding elderly people within the Emergency departments (EDs) of Region Östergötland (Östergötland County) in Sweden.

CFS is a 9-point scale developed within the Canadian Study of Health and Aging. It comprises of a pictograms and a clinical description to help assign scores ranging from very fit to terminally ill. CFS enables clinicians to rapidly stratify the degree of frailty in the elderly with the help of questions and clinical assessment. However, since the assessment is judgement based, it is important that the inter-rater reliability is satisfactory.

This study is part of a larger project where all eligible patients who visit the ED (24/7) for a period of four weeks will be enrolled and then subsequently assessed with CFS by one of their responsible health-care professionals (i.e. physician, registered nurse or nurse assistant). For this study, each professional on the team will individually assess each patient. First, a clinical judgement is performed (frail/not frail) without any instrument, and then the patient is assessed by using the CFS. This will take place during work shifts when someone from the research team is present and can arrange the assessments, as well as ensure that they are conducted independently. These work shifts will be selected using the online application Research Randomizer, to randomly include all hours of the day as well as eligible health-care professionals.

The research-team member will collect the assigned CFS-scores and information on the age, gender, profession, position (emergency physician or intern/resident from other specialities) and the number of years in the profession of each assessor. Informed consent will be obtained from all health-care professionals who participate. No data that can identify any patient will be collected.

Sample size is determined to be 100 patients, which would be more than sufficient with a power of 90% and α 0,05.

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: No

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

Health-care professionals:

  • Working in the ED, as part of the emergency-care team that are responsible for a patient ≥65 years

Patients:

  • ≥65 years

Exclusion criteria

Health care professionals:

  • Unwilling to provide informed consent

Patients:

  • ≤65 years

Treatment and study plan

Primary outcomes

  1. Level of inter-rater reliability regarding frailty as assessed by CFS

    Time frame: The assessment will be made in connection with the patient´s first meeting with the care team, i.e. within 1 hour from the patient´s arrival to the ED

    Inter-rater reliability of the CFS, expressed as Intraclass Correlation Coefficient

Secondary outcomes

  1. Level of correlation between degree of frailty (CFS 1-9) and degree of inter-rater reliability

    Time frame: The assessment will be made in connection with the patient´s first meeting with the care team, i.e. within 1 hour from the patient´s arrival to the ED

    Investigates whether inter-rater reliability, expressed as Intraclass Correlation Coefficient, varies between scale scores in CFS. Described descriptively.

  2. Agreement between CFS and clinical judgement (frail/not frail)

    Time frame: The clinical judgement is made just before the assessment with CFS

    Investigates the agreement between a clinical judgement (with no frailty tool) regarding the patient being frail or not, compared to frailty according to the CFS (cut-off 5). Expressed as a percentage.

Other outcomes

  1. Difference in measures for Inter-rater reliability, expressed as Intraclass Correlation Coefficient, between care teams with emergency physicians in relation to care teams with interns/residents from other specialties.

    Time frame: The assessment will be made in connection with the patient´s first meeting with the care team, i.e. within 1 hour from the patient´s arrival to the ED

    An Emergency department in Sweden typically has physicians from other specialities who work for a period of time. They may not have the same education and training in CFS assessments, we want to explore if the results differ in terms of inter-rater reliability between care teams with emergency physicians and care teams with other physicians.

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

University Hospital, Linkoeping

Other

Registry information

Important dates

Study start
2021
Primary completion
2021
Study completion
2021
First posted
May 3, 2021
Registry last updated
Nov 15, 2021

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

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This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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