Fall Prevention – Checklist of Things we can do to prevent falls
- Deaths from Older Adult Falls:Links to an external site. Falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among older adults—and the age-adjusted rate of fall deaths is increasing.
- Costs of Older Adult Falls:Links to an external site. Falls are costly. Each year about $50 billion is spent on non-fatal fall injuries and $754 million is spent on fatal injuries. This map lets you compare older adult falls cost by state. Hover over a state to reveal its total falls cost and a breakdown of Medicare, Medicaid, and private/out-of-pocket costs.
In the last few months, I keep hearing about friends of friends/client’s whose family members have fallen (broken a hip or hit their head) and died. It has made me pause and remind me of the idea of evaluating and re-evaluating regularly our biggest risk factors for a life changing event (if you’ve been a student of mine for years, I almost always ask my students to evaluate this every semester!).
This video does a good job of listing some reminders and offers a checklist of things we can do to prevent falls and warrants a good 8 minutes of your time.
- In the United States, every second of the day, an older adult falls; every 20 seconds of the day, an older adult dies from a fall.
- Learn and Do exercises to Strengthen (and build up muscular endurance) of Legs
- Clean up your home from clutter and rugs that could be a fall risk.
- Take Frequent Rest breaks when working around your home, and exercise extreme caution when using ladders or step stools.
- Use a chair to get dressed
- Organize things to eye level in the kitchen, or use a reacher
- Bathroom – use stronger rails when in the bathtub and use a shower chair, bath mat to ensure your feet are dry, raised toilets
- Do regular visual screening; make sure your home is well lit especially in the middle of the night. Be extra careful for multi-focal vision. Update prescriptions every 2 years.
- Outside: use railing or a cane, good leg goes up, bad leg first on the way down
- The BEST WAY TO FALL, if you need to fall
- The BEST WAY TO GET UP FROM A FALL
- Medications: write a comprehensive list of meds; talk to your doctor about side effects, or inquire on alternative medicines with less side effects. Be your own advocate.