Geriatric falls and their prevention in the Santa Eulalia Assisted Foundation Residence
M. Gonzano Rubio, R. Martínez Sellarés

SUMMARY

  The aim of our work is to study the falls of the institutionalized elderly in order to be able to establish a prevention protocol. The nursing staff has the responsibility of assessing the risks of falling, as well as the responsibility to prevent them.

  Our institution is composed of a group of 73 residents with physical and psychical handicaps with high-grade dependencies leading to high lesion risks due to falls. In some occasions such risks do happen and is registered in writing, and in other cases the consequences were too irrelevant that were not registered at all. At this point we stated the peed to create a standardized written register that would allow us to detect the causes and consequences, and other parameters in assessing the falls. After evaluating the falls occurred in the established period of iune 1998 to jan 1999, we proposed to elaborate a prevention protocol to lessen the fall incidents and as a result, the consequences of such fall. To be able to commence our study we had to know all predisposing causes that may have lead to the fall. In this way, the consulted bibliography made us keep in mind three key factors:

a. the aging process itself,
b. the characteristics of our institution, and
c. the register characteristics of the fall that had taken place noted down by the staff.

KEY WORDS

Geriatric falls, protocol of falls.

Vol. 13 nº2-2002