This weekend my mother-in-law suffered a bad fall at her nursing home. The fall happened around 5:00 AM and resulted in an ambulance ride to the local hospital. Luckily, she didn't break any bones but did suffer a nasty gash across her forehead and two black eyes.
Each year, 1.8 million Americans over age 65 are injured in falls, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some rebound as if the injury never happened. But for some, the fall sets off a downward spiral of physical and emotional problems — including pneumonia, depression, social isolation, infection and muscle loss — that become too much for their bodies to withstand.
My mother-in-law's fall lead me to do a little Internet search over the weekend about the frequency and preventability of falls in the nursing home setting. I ran across a great article from the New York Times entitled, "Once Just an Aging Sign, Falls Merit Complex Care."
The article is worth reading. The issue is complex but it is clear to me that nursing homes and doctors caring for nursing home patients are doing far too little to reduce the likelihood of what can be a life-changing or even fatal injury.
Monday, November 10, 2008
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The issue of falls is multifactorial but the main cause is that patients who are unsteady and unable to stand will continually try to do so. This is very true of patients with dementia. The use of soft restraints which can prevent this has been virtually sued away. Bed alarms can go off but you can run fast enough to prevent then from falling is you have a patient with dementia. You cant afford to have someone in each room watching because that is how close you have to be to stop them. Lastly, it takes 2 people to catch every one that is falling.
So, here it is. I told my troops in the military that if you have a problem and want to tell me about you had better have the solution. So, what is you solution?
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