Abstract
Background: Rehabilitation care is indispensable in promoting the healthy lives of people as they grow older, especially when they are experiencing an increasing burden of disabling conditions, like in the aftermath of floods and disaster emergencies. We engaged experts to seek their consensus on the interventions that were identified in a prior systematic review for enhancing geriatric rehabilitation care (GRC) for Chinese older adults to manage or live with disabling health conditions induced by floods.
Methods: We conducted the eDelphi consensus study drawing a composition of international experts across diverse professional fields both within and outside China. Using a pilot-tested and Qualtrics-generated eDelphi survey that contained 31 statements on interventions identified earlier in a systematic review a priori, experts were invited by email to independently rate them based on a 5-point Likert scale in two rounds (R1 and R2).
Results: Of the 200 eDelphi experts who were initially invited to participate in the study, 50 and 44 completed R1 and R2, respectively. A majority of them were male (R1 = 64% and R2 = 61.4%), Chinese (R1 = 68% and R2 = 70.5%), and work in disaster risk reduction field (R1 = 38% and R2 = 36.4%). Expert consensus at ≥=70% was only attained on 4 and 9 statements in R1 and R2, respectively. In R2, consensus dwelt on interventions for promoting timely psychosocial care, adequate resource allocation, as well as social support and participation.
Conclusions: While this eDelphi study contributes knowledge on promoting GRC in China and other contexts that witness ageing population and extreme climate events like floods, it agitates for further research, especially on the interventions that did not attain ≥50% consensus in R2.