Document Type

Article

Department

School of Nursing and Midwifery, East Africa

Abstract

The objective was to identify factors leading to falls and determine the role of nurses and carers play in falls prevention. A retrospective audit of the performance of nurses and carers regarding falls prevention among older adults was used. Residents who had a fall during July 2015 (n=25) were identified using purposeful sampling. Data for this study were collected from the files of these residents. Data analysis was done by using the Fisher exact test which was appropriate for the collected data. Residents aged 85-89 years had the most falls (32%); however, one resident who fell five times in the studied month was aged 90 years. Residents aged 70-74 years had the lowest number of falls (8%). Twenty-two (88%) of the residents who fell were incontinent, 20 (80%) were confused, 19 (76%) were using walking aids and four (16%) were blind. Only five (20%) residents who reported falls in the studied month were independent. Most falls occurred among residents of advanced age, and among those who had incontinence, were confused and failed to use walking aids. Residential home staff should increase vigilance during specific times and monitors closely residents with a high risk of falls.

Publication (Name of Journal)

Geriatric Care

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Included in

Nursing Commons

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