Fall Prevention in Older Adults, Research Paper Example

Many older adults face a number of significant risks as they age, including the potential to experience falls under certain conditions, such as during hospitalizations. This requires nurses and other care providers to exercise caution in their efforts to manage patient outcomes and to be proactive in working towards a successful set of solutions that will have a lasting impact on the prevention of falls for these patients. It also requires nurses to develop protocols and strategies to reduce these risks and to be effective in managing patient care to improve quality of life and to prevent falls on a regular basis.

Approximately one-third of older adults who reside in community dwellings experience falls on an annual basis, and ten percent of these falls may be serious in nature and cause major injury (Kelsey, Procer-Gray, Hannan, & Li, 2012). In addition, patients may experience additional fears of future falls, instability, reduced independence, and overall disability that may impact their lives in different ways (Kelsey et.al, 2012). These factors demonstrate that patient falls must be a critical priority for older adults and that healthcare providers must be able to provide resources in order to aid in the prevention of these falls on a more consistent basis to improve quality of life for older adults.

The PICOT question for this subject area is as follows:
Patient population: Older adults over the age of 70 who are likely to be at a greater risk of falls due to any number of health concerns or other risks that impact their daily lives

Intervention: Strategies to prevent falls must be identified and executed in order to prevent falls in older adults

Comparison: It is necessary to compare older adults who have experienced falls versus those who have not experienced these falls but are at risk of falling

Outcome: It is expected that the chosen strategy or protocol will be effective in reducing the number of patient falls that occur in a given nursing care environment

Time: An evaluation of the chosen strategy will occur over a three-month period

The primary purpose of the following discussion is to develop a falls prevention strategy to support older adults who have been hospitalized and who face a risk of falls during hospitalization. This evaluation will encourage nurses to adopt a universal strategy to promote falls prevention and to be proactive in recognizing different types of falls risk that may impact this patient population in different ways.

Levels of Evidence

In response to the challenges of achieving falls prevention, it is important to identify specific areas that will be impacted by nursing practice and the tools that are used to reduce falls risk and subsequent patient outcomes. Falls prevention must address the most common reasons for patient falls, including walking, along with individual characteristics and other activities (Kelsey et.al, 2012). This requires an examination of the data that is available and an opportunity to evaluate how to improve falls prevention strategies within a given environment. Most importantly, evaluation strategies must be individual in nature because each person may experience a different type of experience that impacts his or her own risk of falls; therefore, nurses must be aware of this issue when addressing a prevention strategy (Kelsey et.al, 2012).

The evidence that is available addresses a number of specific focus areas that identify why patient falls occur, the most frequent methods of falls, and risk factors that are common among these patients (Ambrose, Paul, & Hausdorff, 2013). Falls without injury are often viewed differently than those that cause injury, as this may impact how many are reported and may depict lower accuracy in the number of falls that have actually occurred (Ambrose et.al, 2013). These under-reporting statistics are essential to the discovery of methods to improve falls prevention and to recognize how to best address falls risk across the older adult population to improve outcomes.

Search Strategy

For this discussion, the phrase “falls prevention in older adults” was used to identify specific articles within Google Scholar from 2011 to the present. These criteria generated a number of articles with different types of relevance to the topic and also provided a means of understanding some of the most common issues related to falls prevention for patients. This search also introduced a number of articles that provided further evidence of falls through statistical evaluations and systematic reviews, among other types, that provided a greater understanding of the issues that are common in patient falls, as well as some of the common characteristics that exist for patients who are at risk of falls. There was no refinement of the search strategy because the terms provided a specific approach to falls prevention that was effective in addressing the question in a comprehensive manner.

Finally, two articles were selected for further review and consideration and to address some of the most relevant issues regarding patient falls and prevention. Ambrose et.al (2013) offered a systematic review of existing literature in order to consider patient falls and the risks associated with individual patients in order to identify a strategy that would be effective in meeting patient care needs and to prevent falls over the long term. Kelsey et.al (2012) addressed the significance of falls and the common factors associated with falls risk, and aimed to provide information that would be effective in supporting a public health approach to preventing falls among the older adult population to improve health outcomes and quality of life for these patients.

References

Ambrose, A. F., Paul, G., & Hausdorff, J. M. (2013). Risk factors for falls among older adults: a review of the literature. Maturitas, 75(1), 51-61.

Kelsey, J. L., Procter-Gray, E., Hannan, M. T., & Li, W. (2012). Heterogeneity of falls among older adults: implications for public health prevention. American journal of public health, 102(11), 2149-2156.