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What are lay UK public perceptions of frailty: a scoping review

Yes / Rationale and Perceptions of frailty can influence how families cope, quality of life and access to support services.
Yet little is known of how lay members of the UK general public perceive frailty. This scoping review aimed to explore how
frailty is perceived among the lay public in the United Kingdom.
Methods: The established scoping review methodology by Arksey and O’Malley was followed and searches were conducted
across eight electronic databases and grey literature websites for articles published between 1990 and August 2022. In total,
6,705 articles were identified, of which six were included in the review. Data were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s thematic
analysis framework.
Results: Three key themes were identified; frailty as a normal part of ageing, perceived consequences of frailty and coping with
frailty. Overall, frailty has negative connotations and is perceived as linked to a natural part of the ageing process, increased
dependency, loss of identity and social exclusion and stigma. However, it is unclear whether these perceptions have a direct
bearing on access to support services for communities.
Conclusion and implications: This review identifies that it is imperative for health and social care service providers to
consider the individual meaning of frailty for older people and families, to understand and integrate their particular needs
and preferences when planning and delivering person centred frailty care and support. There is also a need for development
of interventions that focus on increasing education and reducing stigma around frailty in order to change frailty perceptions
in the UK. / This report is independent research funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Yorkshire and Humber Applied Research Collaborations NIHR200166.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/19416
Date17 April 2023
CreatorsShafiq, S., Haith-Cooper, Melanie, Hawkins, R., Parveen, Sahdia
Source SetsBradford Scholars
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle, Published version
Rights© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com, CC-BY-NC

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