Fall Risk/Prevention
The study will address the question: for the older adults (P), how does reduction in medications (I) prevent the fall risk (O) compared to use of supportive aids (C)
The problem is identified because of the reality of the increase in the number of accidents resulting from falls, especially for older adults. Previous data show that falls are among the six main causes of deaths among older adults in the country. It is also among the leading factors behind injuries, causing admissions in hospitals. The estimates indicate that almost 50% of the older adults who are hospitalized because of falls do not live past one year of the accident. Experts have indicated a huge cost because of the prevalence of falls leading to admission in hospitals (Muir, Gopaul, & Montero, 2012). The burden of falls is related to the loss of life and productivity, economic cost, and reduction in the quality of life of the affected. The cost is borne by the affected persons, their families, and by the health care system in the country.
The older adults have been placed on supporting aids, to prevent them from the risks falling. However, there are incidences where these individuals have to live on their own or stay without support for long hours each day. The supporting aids are not always effective in preventing the danger of suffering the accident. Because of the ineffectiveness of this strategy, it becomes critical to come up with better methods of preventing the fall among the population. During this age, the individuals are under various kinds of medications to deal with their physical and mental health (McDonough et al., 2017). While most of these drugs are helpful to their health, they are the leading cause of falling.
It is possible that cutting on the drugs, particularly the psychoactive drugs will play an important role in lowering the risks. The area is one of the fragmented approaches to clinical intervention that is failing the older adults (Hyer, 2014). The drugs that are important to their blood pressure might be detrimental to their risk of falling. Those which are necessary for their depression might be the reason for their next accident. There are real trade-offs, but the possible solution lies in creating a customized approach, taking into consideration how the prescription of multiple medications can augment their chances of falling.
Support for the intervention is critical and will only be obtained through a research. The need to come up with evidence-based strategy to prevent falls is the focus of the current study. If cutting on the drugs is the most effective approach, the data will indicate how it will be effectively implemented. The data for the study will be based on a secondary review of research. The analysis will be carried out to find the gaps in research that will be filled using the collected data. The key terms that will be used for the search will include older adults, reduction in medications, fall risk Prevention, and supportive aids.
Various databases will be used to obtain the articles for the review. The databases of choice are those that contain medical and nursing journals. It is necessary to limit the searches to those databases which will have the most relevant information. Therefore, among the pertinent databases that will be visited include CINAHL, Medline, PubMed, and EBSCOhost.
