Patient-centered outpatient care in old age
Becoming very old will increasingly be the rule rather than the exception in the coming years. For Germany, the number of people aged 80 years and over is expected to double within 40 years, reaching approximately 9 million (Federal Statistical Office, 2015).
Gowever, little is known about the daily lives healthcare of the very old and how they should be designed optimally from their perspective. In particular, there a rarely studies on the specific perceptions of the very old regarding good outpatient healthcare. This research gap appears to be even more serious in the field of dental care.
For patient-centered and effective outpatient healthcare, we need to understand the perspectives and motives of the very old and integrate them into the general as well as the individual design of care. In addition, the practical perspective - of outpatient physicians and dentists - must be included in order to develop practical recommendations. Therefore, the dissertation project consists of three subprojects:
- Systematic review of international qualitative studies on experiences and views of the very old with regard to their outpatient healthcare
- Interview study to explore experiences and views of very old people in Cologne, comparing general outpatient healthcare and dental care
- Online survey to explore the experiences, views and challenges regarding provision of outpatient healthcare for the very old from the perspective of physicians and dentists in North Rhine-Westphalia