Importance of the continuing education of professionals in the prevention of falls among institutionalized geriatric patients
Torres Egea P., Sánchez Castillo P.D., Gonzano Rubio M., Martínez Sellares R.

SUMMARY

Introduction: Falls are the most common type of accidents among elder people and, as scientifical evidences show, between 50 and 60% of the elderly who are resident on nursing health care institutions fall once a year. Complications regarding this matter are the main cause of accidental death and the sixth cause of death of adults older than 65. Preventing such kind of accidents is a prior objective in all fields concerning nursing cares to older adults and specially in nursing care institutions or in long care institutions. Professionals who work in direct care need to determine the problem causes y to value the efficiency and effectiveness of multiple prevention actions that are actually engaged interdisciplinary. As a result of this collaboration some investigation works are being developed and their results are to be published.

Objectives: To demonstrate the interest of such question for all professionals who work on this field, and to analyze the most effective prevention actions actually running, we propose to review systematically all scientific studies published during the last 15 years, worldwide and without language limitation, about different fall prevention actions on older adults who are living in nursing care or long care institutions.

Methods: The study population is formed by randomized clinical trials about primary prevention interventions of falls, on old adults patients residents in nursing care or long care institutions, published during the last 15 years worldwide and without language limitation. For the research, 24 scientific databases have been checked. Besides, some bibliographic catalogues, expert consultations and Internet searching engines, have been used. The researching team reviewed an amount of 2,382 studies, from which 156 have been analyzed. Finally, 7 of the analyzed studies have been selected (this seven have been blanked), after examining their methodological quality through the Checklist of Consort Statement (2002). A descriptive analysis has been made, to obtain some information regarding the matter, and afterwards a goal analysis was made too. This analysis was made to establish the effectiveness of the interventions related to falls prevention.

Results: Interventions of falls prevention on older adults residents in nursing care or long care institutions, reduce globally falling possibilities in OR: 0.63, IC 95%: 0.53-0.74. Becker set an intervention on falls prevention where falling possibilities decreased in OR: 0,53; IC 95%: 0.41-0.69.

Conclusions: The setting of a plan or guidelines for the intervention regarding falls prevention in nursing care and long care institutions reduces 1.58 times the possibilities for older adults to fall. Team training appears to be a main aspect in falls prevention in the analyzed works and papers. Falling prevention on care institutions requires a multifactor, interdisciplinary and individualized approach.

KEY WORDS

Accidental falls, geriatrics, nursing home care, nursing home, long stay units, intervention, prevention.

Vol. 16 nº1-2005