Fall Prevention Among the Elderly: Intervention Program and Practical Approach

Fall Prevention among the Elderly
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Fall Prevention among the Elderly
The aging process, a common factor for activity intolerance, poses a significant challenge to nurses and requires an effective nursing intervention to avert and prevent cases of falling among older adults in a long-term care facility. Falling among the older adults suffering activity intolerance can lead to fatal injuries and even loss of life in extreme cases. Nurses are the best-suited caregivers in the healthcare industry to assist the elderly during their scheduled physical exercises and most importantly prevent them from falling. Long-term nursing facility and care homes for the elderly patients employ various interventional programs to prevent falls and reduce their risk of occurrence.
The management and prevention of falls is an essential program that adopted by the long-term care facilities and other care centers. Nurses at the long-term care facility used different nursing interventions depending on the specific conditions of the patient. Elderly patients with a record of falling during their physical activities seemed confident with the nurses at the center as the latter helped them in controlling their fears through individual and group talks on how to reduce the risk or probability of falling. The nurses further offered simulations on how to prevent falls during the physical activity sessions (Alves, 2017). The use of electronic devices or monitors to alert the nurses of a patient’s fall was a new practice approach evident at the facility, which provided audits for patients with most falls and thus allowing for appropriate measures to be taken. Patients or residents with most falls would often be placed near the nurses’ station.
Activity intolerance has a direct correlation to lack of energy to engage in physical exercises (Uchmanowicz, 2018). Hence, a person should have a balanced diet that will generate enough energy to perform the recommended activities. The task of ensuring that the elderly patients in the active exercise intervention attended the sessions without fail was the nutritionists. The nutritionists took it upon themselves to attend the physical activity sessions and assess the energy demands of all the patients. The dietary recommendations made by the nutritionist facilitated healthy working out for the patients without falling due to a lack of energy for the activity exercise intervention provided by the nurses. It was a collaborative effort between the two professions at the center that worked seamlessly to improve the older adults' quality of life. As a team player, the long-term center provided an efficient platfporm for collaborating my efforts and learning from the nutritionists.
Effective and efficien...