UMMS Affiliation
School of Medicine; Respiratory Care, UMass Memorial Medical Center
Publication Date
2020-10-23
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Geriatrics | Gerontology | Health Psychology | Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms | Psychiatry and Psychology | Public Health Education and Promotion
Abstract
Background: Falls are the leading cause of fatal injury, and most common cause of non-fatal trauma, among older adults. We sought to elicit older patient's perspectives on fall risks for the general population as well as contributions to any personal falls to identify opportunities to improve fall education.
Methods: Ten patients with a history of falls from inpatient trauma and outpatient geriatric services were interviewed. Transcripts were analyzed independently by five individuals using triangulation and constant comparison (NVivo11, QSR International) to compare fall risks to fall causes.
Results: All patients reported that either they (9/10 participants) or someone they knew (8/10) had fallen. Despite this, only two personally worried about falling. Patient perceptions of fall risks fell into seven major themes: physiologic decline (8/10); underestimating limitations (7/10); environmental hazards (7/10), lack of awareness/rushing (4/10), misuse/lack of walking aids (3/10); positional transitions (2/10), and improper footwear (1/10). In contrast, the most commonly reported causes of personal falls were lack of awareness/rushing (7/10), environmental hazards (3/10), misuse/lack of walking aids (2/10), improper footwear (2/10), physiologic decline (2/10), underestimating limitations (1/10) and positional transitions (1/10). In general tended to attribute their own falls to their surroundings and were less likely to attribute physical or psychological limitations.
Conclusion: Despite participants identifying falls as a serious problem, they were unlikely to worry about falling themselves. Participants were able to identify common fall risks. However, when speaking about personal experience, they were more likely to blame environmental hazards or rushing, and minimized the role of physiologic decline and personal limitations.
Keywords
Clinical geriatrics, education, falls, prevention
Rights and Permissions
Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
DOI of Published Version
10.1177/2333721420967884
Source
Collins CE, Chandra A, Nguyen B, Schultz K, Mathew P, Chen T, Renshaw S, Rose KM, Santry HP. The Rose-Colored Glasses of Geriatric Fall Patients: Inconsistencies Between Knowledge of Risk Factors for and Actual Causes of Falls. Gerontol Geriatr Med. 2020 Oct 23;6:2333721420967884. doi: 10.1177/2333721420967884. PMID: 33173805; PMCID: PMC7588762. Link to article on publisher's site
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Gerontology and geriatric medicine
Related Resources
PubMed ID
33173805
Repository Citation
Collins CE, Chandra A, Nguyen B, Schultz K, Mathew P, Chen T, Renshaw S, Rose KM, Santry HP. (2020). The Rose-Colored Glasses of Geriatric Fall Patients: Inconsistencies Between Knowledge of Risk Factors for and Actual Causes of Falls. Open Access Publications by UMMS Authors. https://doi.org/10.1177/2333721420967884. Retrieved from https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/oapubs/4412
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Included in
Geriatrics Commons, Gerontology Commons, Health Psychology Commons, Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms Commons, Psychiatry and Psychology Commons, Public Health Education and Promotion Commons