People with two or more long-term conditions at the same time (multimorbidity) can have complex care needs. The number of people in our community with multimorbidity is increasing. People with multimorbidity may be less likely to benefit from treatments, because they may be more likely to experience side-effects of treatment than people without multimorbidity. This can be even more challenging in emergency situations, such as in hospital emergency departments.
Very few researchers have looked at the care of people with multimorbidity in emergency departments, despite how common it now is in our communities. This research study will look into this issue.
We will firstly find out how common multimorbidity is in people attending emergency departments in Lothian. We will then look at different ways of measuring multimorbidity, as well as frailty, to see whether this affects how common it is. We will then look into how these measures affect how likely it is that someone dies within 30 days of attending the emergency department, along with other outcomes. We will then use statistical methods to try and find groups of people who are more likely to experience poor outcomes. We hope our study will provide important information to help researchers, clinicians and the wider public to better understand what happens to people with multimorbidity when they need emergency care, with a longer-term aim of improving care for them.
