Falls Education and Post-Fall Management in an Independent Living Community

Abstract

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of every four adults over the age of 65 falls annually. Falls are the leading cause of injury for the older adult population, and fall-related deaths in the older adult population are increasing. For older adults in an independent living community, effective fall prevention programs are essential to reduce the rates of falls and, therefore, preserve functional abilities and improve quality of life. This project aims to address falls by providing fall education to residents and implementing a post-fall checklist for nurses to utilize when responding to fall events in the independent living community. The project also increased the organization's awareness of its current fall prevention practices and implemented changes to improve staff’s awareness of falls. This paper discusses the project's successful implementation of organization-specific fall prevention education and the application of a new post-fall process. There were 84 falls throughout the implementation of the project, and nurse compliance with the utilization of the post-fall checklist was 90.5%. The project identified areas for the organization to further improve its response and follow-up to falls in the independent living community. The combination of these interventions works to increase fall risk awareness and address fall risks with the goal of reducing fall rates for independent living community residents.