At my first Level II Fieldwork, I treated a client that was admitted to our facility due to a fall. She fell in her living room, and was not able to get up from her fall to call for help. She was going to be discharged soon, and still had a significant fear of falling down. We wanted to teach her fall recovery strategies before she went home. My fieldwork educator was not very familiar with fall recovery techniques, so we researched the idea and we sought out advice from a physical therapist that knew more about the topic. We found many articles that showed which fall recovery strategies were most effective, and we got a better idea on how to implement them at our facility. We were able to utilize large padded mats in the therapy gym. We got on the floor with the client and show her techniques to get back up or at least call for help. We also gave her handouts from the OT Toolkit that provided her with visuals on how to recover from a fall. When she successfully recovered from a fall in the simulated environment, it made a world of difference in her confidence to recover from a fall in her own home.
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ot_tool_kit_fall_recovery_.pdf | |
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References
Chase, C. A., Mann, K., Wasek, S., & Arbesman, M. (2012). Systematic review of the effect of home modification and fall prevention programs on falls and the performance of community-dwelling older adults. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 66, 284–291. http://dx.doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2012.005017
Hall, Cheryl. (2009). Don't let a fall get you down. Occupational Therapy Toolkit, (256-262).