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Abstract Background The Rapid Assistance with Frailty Team (RAFT) has been operating within our local hospital since 2021. This novel multidisciplinary service aims to support frail older adults during hospital admission, by conducting focused comprehensive geriatric assessments, and providing bespoke support to their primary team. One method of evaluating the impact of the service has been to seek regular feedback from other staff, to guide continuous quality improvement regarding our approach. Methods This service evaluation was registered with the Quality and Patient Safety department locally in January 2024. An online questionnaire was developed to seek feedback from colleagues who would have experience of the service, with a link distributed via email to relevant staff members. Data collection took place over an eight-week period. Results In total, 69 responses from staff were received, and analysed thematically. They demonstrated high degrees of staff satisfaction, with over 76% either agreeing or strongly agreeing that ‘RAFT is a valuable service’. A further 69% of respondents felt that ‘RAFT is helpful in supporting discharge’. The most common expectations were for the team to assist with frailty assessment; support discharge planning; offer MDT input; provide follow-up care; and conduct education. Staff felt the service could be improved through refining the medical input role; provision of an ED service; increased staffing; expanding the discharge planning role; development of referral pathways; and improved communication. Conclusion Following presentation of these findings at our departmental teaching, a service development plan was agreed. This includes organising a focused internal rapid improvement event, with RAFT staff utilising the feedback from this service evaluation to identify how the service can be improved, as well as identifying key performance indicators to evaluate this progress. We will repeat this service evaluation in 6 months’ time, to assess if these interventions have made a meaningful impact.
Walsh et al. (Sun,) studied this question.