Preventing falls in the elderly
Trip on a stair when you're 20, and you might skin a knee. If you're 70, however, you might wind up with a broken bone, a hospital stay, and weeks or months of rehabilitation. Falls are the leading cause of injury among seniors nationwide, and an aging baby-boomer population makes finding ways to prevent them more crucial than ever.
Todd Johnson, Pharm.D., a pharmacist at Lake Region Hospital in Fergus Falls (population 13,658), knows the scenario all too well. For 30 years, he has consulted at local nursing homes to make sure patients are getting the proper medications, paying particular attention to the charts of patients who have recently fallen. "Just today, I was looking at the medication of an elderly woman who fell after getting light-headed when she stood up," says Johnson, who is also an assistant professor in the University's College of Pharmacy. The woman was fine, he notes, but many others in similar situations end up with broken hips and other serious complications.
When Heather Hamernick, Class of 2007, chose to focus her RPAP community health assessment project last year on falls among the elderly, Johnson encouraged her to take a broad view and to seek solutions. Hamernick quickly discovered that dozens of factors contribute to the problem, including certain medications, arthritis, cluttered environments, and vision problems.
A health-care team in Fergus Falls used Heather Hamernick's RPAP project recommendations to launch a pilot program aimed at reducing falls among elderly patients.
Her research paper described the scope of the problem and called for assembling teams of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and others to help reduce the risks. "A pharmacist might look at what drugs contribute to drowsiness, but a physical therapist might say that that doesn't matter if the patient can't get out of bed," says Hamernick. "Everyone is trained to solve problems differently."
She presented her findings and recommendations last spring to a team that has since launched a pilot program to help assess the risks of falls among elderly patients. Current RPAP student Mandy Hoffman worked on the Fergus Falls pilot project and says a more comprehensive falls-prevention program may be ready next year.
Hamernick, who is working in Uganda this spring as part of a global health rotation and will soon start her family practice residency at St. John's Hospital in suburban Maplewood, says it was gratifying to complete a project that she knew was important to the local community. "There was a lot of excitement for this project, and it was great to see so many people who wanted to work on it," she says.
Johnson concurs, describing the project as "a win for students and a win for the community."