Abstract
The purpose of preventive home visits is to promote overall health and wellbeing in old age. The aim of this paper was to describe the process of the development of evidence-based preventive home visits, targeting independent community-living older persons. The evidence base was generated from published studies and practical experiences. The results demonstrate that preventive home visits should be directed to persons 80 years old and older and involve various professional competences. The visits should be personalized, lead to concrete interventions, and be followed up. The health areas assessed should derive from a broad perspective and include social, psychological, and medical aspects. Core components in the protocol developed in this study captured physical, medical, psychosocial, and environmental aspects. Results of a pilot study showed that the protocol validly identified health risks among older people with different levels of ADL dependence.
Highlights
Old people’s health and wellbeing are urgent questions for the society of today, and ageing in place is a common policy and prioritised by the majority of older persons, in Sweden as in most European countries [1]
Our analysis of the health areas related to health effects included in the screening, concluded that information on medical, social, psychological, functional capacity, and environmental aspects were areas vital to screen
Some disadvantages in the ADLStaircase instrument [26] can, be discussed, even if the results indicate that the instrument can be used to identify health risks and differentiate health status among groups of older people
Summary
Old people’s health and wellbeing are urgent questions for the society of today, and ageing in place is a common policy and prioritised by the majority of older persons, in Sweden as in most European countries [1]. Preventive home visits targeting community-dwelling older persons represent one example of proactive societal action that has received growing attention. The purpose of PHV is to promote overall health and wellbeing in old age, to identify people at risk for health problems, to prevent further decline, to enhance the possibility for the individual to maintain activity and participation, to be in control of everyday life, and to experience life satisfaction [3,4,5,6]. Based on an attempt to support a Swedish municipality in developing evidence-based PHV, the overriding purpose of this paper is to describe a methodological process generating recommendations for further research and practice implementation
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