Grant: Project Grant

Older adults (65 years and older) make up 51% of all injury hospitalizations in Canada. This number is expected to rise as the aging population surges in the coming years. The most common cause of unintentional physical injury in older adults is a fall, followed by motor vehicle collisions. The injuries resulting from these incidents include traumatic brain injury, fractures, broken bones and internal organ damage. Injured older adults receive specialized care in trauma centres that are equipped for injury management. Because of this organized care, many injured older adults will survive their injuries but their health status and quality of life will significantly change. Up to now, very little has been studied about the long-term illness experiences of older adult trauma survivors because most injury care in the past was tailored to a younger population. For this reason we know very little about the experiences of these survivors; we do not know what outcomes they consider to be most meaningful or if the way we currently deliver care to these patients will lead us to achieve these. Our study will examine the experiences of older adult trauma survivors over two years, so that we can, for the first time, describe and understand what a good quality of life after injury looks like from an older adult's perspective. Using interviews and observations, we will gather survivors' experiences from three Ontario trauma centres at 3-, 12- and 24 months after injury. We are especially interested in understanding how their survivorship experiences are influenced by sociocultural factors such as age and gender, and other social dimensions. Our study results will not only help us to understand what older adult trauma survivors experience and how they might want to receive care differently, but it will help in the selection of measures that healthcare providers and policymakers can use to evaluate and improve the overall quality of care to injured older adults in Canada and beyond.