Two new Canadian studies on fall prevention interventions – a hospital patient safety campaign; and a review of countering social isolation post-falls
Posted March 31, 2022
Two studies have recently been published from Ontario researchers and health practitioners on fall prevention interventions.
The first one “Designing and implementing a zero harm falls prevention program” is about Mackenzie Health, a York region hospital-based fall injury prevention program that was a quality improvement program organization-wide, across all departments.
An additional article published by the same project team called "Toward Zero Harm..." is about the hospital's 5 step strategy for system-wide changes to practice and patient safety culture. They report considerable success in one year: "increased patient safety incident reporting by 37% while simultaneously decreasing falls with injury by 39%".
The second one is more academic, a detailed systematic review led by Andrea Tricco of St Michael's Hospital in Toronto, along with a large team exploring "Effective interventions to prevent or mitigate social isolation and/or loneliness in older adults who experienced a fall". What is interesting about this study is that it looks for what works to prevent isolation (and thus future falls), and finds one small positive effect from the intervention of multifactorial health assessments and coordinated care pathways.
The issue they studied is not very different from what the Loop Evidence Summary on COVID and Falls explored. A fall-related injury, and/or illness like COVID leads to social isolation and loneliness (and even greater risk for more falls).
Citations:
Designing and implementing a zero harm falls prevention program: a quality improvement study. Wilson MA, Hacker Teper M, Sinno M, Kohlberger K, Nuseir D, Chan A, Palomera-Dinglasan K, Leon L, Donaldson D, Taher A.J Nurs Care Qual. 2022 Feb 4. doi: 10.1097/NCQ.0000000000000617. Abstract PMID: 35125453.
Interventions for social isolation in older adults who have experienced a fall: a systematic review. Tricco AC, Thomas SM, Radhakrishnan A, Ramkissoon N, Mitchell G, et al. BMJ Open. 2022 Mar 9;12(3):e056540. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056540. PMID: 35264363. Free full text at BMJ Open
· Do you have good news to share on effective fall prevention interventions?
· Were there key learnings about what contributes to success? Such as facilitating organization-wide education, comprehensive multi-factor assessments, being adapted to local contexts?
· What are some of the challenges in adapting similar effective interventions into your organization and situation?