Senior alert – a means for better care in cooperation

Health is unevenly distributed across society and the gap between groups is increasing.

The ongoing covid-19 pandemic has shown shortcomings in patient safety in the care provided in the municipalities, and frail older people have been shown to be those most at risk.

The shortcomings identified are associated with the collaboration between the bodies providing care, low staff continuity, and inadequate access to staff with appropriate skills.

Having staff with appropriate skills making the necessary interventions is crucial for nursing care to be safe and secure.

Here, quality registers can be an important tool since data generates valuable knowledge that functions as a basis for sustainable investments.

Senior alert is a national quality register that uses evidence-based instruments to assess risks among older people in various areas.

The register is unique as it includes both risk assessment, underlying causes and interventions, which together form the basis for an effective preventive care process. But, the register is not used to its full potential. Although the risks are registered to a high degree, the underlying causes are not identified to the same extent.

If the need for intervention is not identified, the possibilities for an effective preventive care process and effective collaboration between different actors are missed.

We want to study the factors that constitute support or obstacles to the preventive care process to contribute to an effective and robust preventive care process that promotes effective collaboration between different actors. The project has an interdisciplinary approach and is based on a mixed-methods design.

Including practice-based research, the aim is to design a model for collaboration.

This project is highly relevant to society since the results will strengthen learning, understanding and collaboration between and within organisations and, increased patient safety for frail older people.