Information for Service Providers

Medical Management

Tools You Can Use

• Talk With Your Doc About Falls - Tips on talking to your doctor about falls.
• A Tool Kit To Prevent Senior Falls: Fact sheets, graphs, and brochures about falls and fall prevention for older adults designed for fall prevention programs.
• Media Release: Release about Falls Free, a national action plan that addresses the challenges and barriers related to a national falls prevention initiative and outlines key strategies and action steps to help reduce fall dangers for older adults. (PDF).
• Medications And Falls In The Elderly: Important information about medications that may cause serious side effects contributing to falls in the elderly. (PDF).
• National Safety Month 2005: One-sheet PDF about simple precautions that can save thousands of lives every years. (PDF).
• Safe Steps – Checklist: Checklist to use as a guide that can help keep your family safe from slips and falls at home. (PDF).
• U.S. Fall Prevention Programs for Seniors : A comprehensive PDF about fall prevention programs for seniors from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
• “What Will One of Every Three Seniors Suffer This Year?: Fact about falls in older persons and an online directory of senior care pharmacists across the U.S. and Canada. (PDF)

Websites

• Community and Home Injury Prevention Project for Seniors (CHIPPS): Goal of the CHIPPS program is to create awareness that many injuries to older people can be prevented, develop ways to correct injury hazards and provide resourses on health professionals.
• Fall Prevention Center of Excellence: Started in September 2004, this foundation launched a statewide Fall Prevention Initiative in the state of California to help with risk assessment, exercise and enviornmental modications for fall prevention.
• National Resource Center for Safe Aging: This website contains a wealth of falls-related information for public health professionals, with links to many other useful sites.

Articles

• Building A Culture of Safety: An article from the VAnguard newsletter about the VA Tampa patient safety center. The article includes many helpful tips for caregivers as well as information about Tai Chi.
• ”A Best Practices Guide for the Prevention of Falls Among Seniors Living in the Community: Results of study to review fall prevention programs and practices resulting in evidence for effective approaches for reducing injury among seniors, as well as efficient means of delivering prevention programs.
• Fall Reduction Initiative: Establishing New Directions for Safety (FRIENDS): The goal of this paper is to assist in identifying fall risk factors among older adults and to increase public awareness of measures that can help to prevent falls. (PDF).
• Falls and Hip Fractures Among Older Adults: List of facts and figures from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control about falls and hip fractures.
• “Pharmacist Intervention Can Prevent Falls: This article suggests options for pharmarcy services to help decrease the risk of falls associated with specific medications, medication combinations and more.
• Practical Approaches to Reducing Falls in Nursing Facilities: Steps that can be taken to reduce the risk and lessen the chance that falls will result in injury in nursing facilities.
• Preventing Falls: Which Intervention Is Most Effective? Outlines several interventions that have successfully reduced the incidence of falls among elderly people living at home.
• ”Promising Pathways: Falls Prevention Programs for Older Canadians Living in the Community: Handbook designed for professionals and others who work with seniors and veterans in the community and is based on a comprehensive review of falls prevention programs around the world.
• Research Review Papers: Review includes risk factors and prevention strategies, role of excerise in reducing falls, role of medication modification in fall prevention and the role of environment at home and the community in fall prevention. (PDF).

Other

• Fall Prevention and Management Aid: This aid is intended to prompt clinical staff to consider a systematic assessment for determining patients' risk for falling and to recommend interventions. (DOC).
• Falls Risk Assessment and Management System (FRAMS): Screening test to evaluate falls and medication to determine what is causing falls in an individual.