About this Course

Preventing Falls in Long-Term Care for Clinical Team Members is a self-paced orientation course on fall prevention that will equip or refresh LTC team members on the knowledge and skills required to support residents.

Falls can result in serious injury, hospital admission, and long-term loss of mobility and function. By taking this course, team members in clinical roles will learn about fall risk factors, falls risk assessments, interventions and strategies for falls prevention, and strategies for communicating about falls prevention with residents, essential care partners, and other team members.

Learners will receive an Ontario CLRI certificate for completing this course.

About the Orientation eLearning series

The Orientation eLearning courses, created by the Ontario CLRI at the RIA, provide education for new team members during orientation, and for existing team members during their annual training. These scenario-based learning courses ensure that learners have the knowledge and skills needed to assist the people they support and are in line with Ministry of Long-Term Care guidelines. They were developed using evidence-based best practices and adult education principles, in collaboration with subject matter experts and LTC leaders.

Audience

This course is for long-term care team members in clinical roles.

Acknowledgements

This eLearning course, part of the Orientation course series, was developed by the Ontario CLRI at RIA in 2022 with the generous support of Schlegel Villages. We would like to thank the people who contributed to the development and review of content for this course:

Subject Matter Experts

Dr. Caitlin McArthur, PhD, MScPT, Assistant Professor, Dalhousie University

Christine Hames, R.Kin, Program for Active Living, Schlegel Villages

Dr. George Heckman, MD, FRCP (C), Schlegel Research Chair in Geriatric Medicine, Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging, contributed guidelines used in the section on Orthostatic Hypotension.

Advisors

This course was developed in collaboration with an advisory panel of LTC team members: Abena Nyarko, Ashley Archibald, Dominga Andiso, Feihong Cai, Kaimei Rosemary Liu, Manpreet Harika, Olivia Francis, Rosemarie Cruz, and Tammy Casado.

References

Dykes, P. C. (2018). Using fall risk assessment tools in care planning. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. https://www.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/professionals/systems/hospital/fallprevention-training/webinars/webinar4_falls_usingriskassttools.pdf

Falls risk assessment tool (FRAT). (n.d.). Victoria Department of Health. https://www2.health.vic.gov.au/Api/downloadmedia/%7BC542FA9B-1A24-4C5C-B921-C8A8ADDC1A9C%7D

Health Quality Ontario. (n.d.). Quality improvement road map to preventing falls. Retrieved February 14, 2022, from http://www.hqontario.ca/Portals/0/documents/qi/rf-change-package-falls-en.pdf

Iaboni, A., Van Ooteghem, K., Marcil, M. N., Cockburn, A., Flint, A. J., Grossman, D., & Keren, R. (2018). A palliative approach to falls in advanced dementia. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 26(4), 407–415. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2017.11.014

Logan, P. A., Horne, J. C., Gladman, J. R. F., Gordon, A. L., Sach, T., Clark, A., Robinson, K., Armstrong, S., Stirling, S., Leighton, P., Darby, J., Allen, F., Irvine, L., Wilson, E. C. F., Fox, C., Conroy, S., Mountain, G., McCartney, K., Godfrey, M., & Sims, E. (2021). Multifactorial falls prevention programme compared with usual care in UK care homes for older people: Multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial with economic evaluation. BMJ, 375, e066991. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2021-066991

Meekes, W. M., Korevaar, J. C., Leemrijse, C. J., & van de Goor, I. A. (2021). Practical and validated tool to assess falls risk in the primary care setting: A systematic review. BMJ Open, 11(9), e045431. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-045431

Orthostatic hypotension (postural hypotension). (2022). Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/orthostatic-hypotension/symptoms-causes/syc-20352548

Park, S.-H. (2018). Tools for assessing fall risk in the elderly: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Aging Clinical and Experimental Research, 30(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-017-0749-0

Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario. (2017). Preventing falls and reducing injury from falls (4th ed.). https://rnao.ca/sites/rnao-ca/files/bpg/FALL_PREVENTION_WEB_1207-17.pdf?_ga=2.224525914.1555824589.1652117549-92266722.1626707761

Robertson, K., Logan, P., Ward, M., Pollard, J., Gordon, A., Williams, W., & Watson, J. (2012). Thinking falls-taking action: A falls prevention tool for care homes. British Journal of Community Nursing, 17(5), 206–209. https://doi.org/10.12968/bjcn.2012.17.5.206

Walker, G. M., Armstrong, S., Gordon, A. L., Gladman, J., Robertson, K., Ward, M., Conroy, S., Arnold, G., Darby, J., Frowd, N., Williams, W., Knowles, S., & Logan, P. A. (2016). The Falls in Care Home study: A feasibility randomized controlled trial of the use of a risk assessment and decision support tool to prevent falls in care homes. Clinical Rehabilitation, 30(10), 972–983. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269215515604672

Ward, C., & Kenny, R. A. (1996). Reproducibility of orthostatic hypotension in symptomatic elderly. The American Journal of Medicine, 100(4), 418–422. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0002-9343(97)89517-4