What do Older Adults Know about Fall Prevention?

Objective: Previous studies reveal that practitioners and health care professionals have been facing reluctant attitudes and low compliance from older people on fall prevention. This research aims to present older adults' information and knowledge toward fall prevention. Methods: A total of 206 participants, adults aged 65 or older, who visited the emergency department of a medical center in southern Taiwan due to fall, were enrolled from May to October, 2013. Demographic information, underlying diseases, fall history and a structured questionnaire with specific facets, including information, knowledge and behaviors toward fall prevention, were collected by face-to-face interview. Results: More than 60% of the participants were women and mean (SD) age of the participants was 79.5 (7.2) years. More than 80% of the participants lived with adult children and/or spouse and 10.7% lived alone. 80.1% of participants lived independently without help in their ADL, but 75.7% of participants needed help in IADL. Of the participants, 47.6% indicated that it was their first fall in the past 12 months. Due to this fall, 41.3% and 25.7% of the participants results in head injury and hip fracture. According to our finding, participants generally lacked of accessibility to fall prevention information, programs or clinics. More than 70% of participants had heard that elderly should prevent falls, but less than 10% of participants did not heard of any fall prevention program nor fall prevention clinic. Moreover, less than 20% participants could tell one or more specific strategies to prevent falls, showing that our participants lacked of the coping skill to fall prevention. More specifically, Most participants were unfamiliar with seeing using walling aids or modifying home environment as an strategy to prevent falls. Conclusion: This study revealed that fall prevention intervention in future should focus on capacity building in older adults by offering multiple fall prevention programs in communities and also hospitals, designing suitable messages targeted at elderly in need and disseminating these fall prevention strategies through mass media to build a supportive environment to improve older adults to uptake fall prevention behaviors.

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