"Nursing Home gave Tylenol" -Addressing the incidence of Falls

This article sadly states that the resident, Sylvia Bailey, "had fallen from her wheelchair four times in the past year, hitting the floor so hard she had a permanent dent in her forehead."

Nobody, never mind a frail senior, should be falling repetitively and hitting their head.  And yet I hear from family members regularly that amongst the other ailments a senior might have, that the senior has fallen, often more than once.  People should not be falling.  If someone falls, we need to know why.  We need to know if they've suffered any harm and we need to do something to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

A fall is not an isolated event.  It is the result of a lot of things that have gone wrong.  When I conduct an initial assessment for a new Client what I often discover is that someone has not been eating well, that they are not taking medications as prescribed, that they are dehydrated, that their blood pressure is too low or too high.

I find cluttered environments, risky behaviour (like climbing on small ladders to reach a shelf), poor footcare, inappropriate footwear, an absence of assistive devices or misuse of assistive devices, overuse of sedatives , analgesics or other medications, a lack of medical follow up for underlying conditions-and these are just for starters!

Falls are a complicated issue.  They happen often.  They are not inconsequential.  Many are preventable.  Falls cause pain, suffering, debilitating injuries and they negatively impact quality of life. 

To begin to recognize contributing factors and reduce the incidence of seniors falling, I have the following advice:  We need to see falling as unacceptable.  We need to see falls as preventable.  We need to investigate  possible contributing factors each time there is a fall and we need to address these issues to reduce the risk of a fall happening again.

But the first thing that we need to do is to pay attention. If a senior falls, we need to care.