Project 462389

Older adults often have chronic health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Almost half of all inpatient surgeries are for older adults. However, older adults are at greater risk from surgery because of poorer health. Surgeons must decide if an older adult is fit enough for surgery. A comprehensive assessment of health is called a Geriatric Assessment and can help determine how fit or frail an older adult is. This information can help the surgeon and the older adult to implement measures to optimize the health of the older adult prior to surgery to reduce the risk of complications. Typically, these assessments are done by a geriatric team. However, not everyone who could benefit from a geriatric assessment gets one in Canada due to a shortage of geriatric teams. A way to make geriatric assessment available to more older adults and their doctors is to use an electronic self-assessment that doesn't require a geriatric team. Our team previously worked with patients and computer scientists to develop this self-assessment called Comprehensive Health Assessment for My Plan (CHAMP). In the current study we want to study the implementation of the CHAMP tool in the care of older adults to determine the feasibility, acceptability and barriers and facilitators to using it in routine care for both patients and clinicians. We will implement it in surgical clinics. We will evaluate the use of this tool from the perspective of the patients, the clinicians, and the organization. We will also explore the efficacy of implementing the tool for patients and clinicians. The results of this study will be used to develop a future larger study to examine the clinical effectiveness of implementing this intervention in daily surgical clinical care.