Fall Injuries in Australia | Report

1FALL INJURIES IN AUSTRALIA
Fall Injuries in Australia
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Contents
Fall Injuries in Australia.............................................................................................................3
Description of the Issue..........................................................................................................3
Statistics in Australia..............................................................................................................3
Statistics in Indigenous Australians...................................................................................3
Statistics for another Country (U.S.A)...................................................................................4
Prevention and Management..................................................................................................4
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................6
Reference....................................................................................................................................7

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Fall Injuries in Australia
Injuries may be caused by several issues. Falling is one of the most common causes of
injury. This essay will focus on the topic of injury by falls, its overall statistics, prevention
strategies and role of healthcare professionals in the management of the issue.
Description of the Issue
Injuries acquired by fall is one of the most common cause of morbidity in many
countries. Falling is the cause of a majority of hospitalized injuries, and common commonly
occurs in older adults.
Statistics in Australia
In Australia, injury was found to be major cause of death. Around 327% of total
injuries were estimated due to falls. In the year 2014-2015, the proportion of deaths due to
injuries by fall was 27% in the male population, which increased to a whopping 53% in the
female population. Around 41% of the hospitalisations due to injury was caused by falls.
Overall, males had a higher injury rate than that of females, and fall injuries increased
tremendously in age groups above 75 (Aihw.gov.au., 2020).

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Figure 1: Percentage of Fall Injury according to Sex
Statistics in Indigenous Australians
The injuries in Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders were higher than the general
population. It was seen that around 23,000 cases of hospitalization was recorded due to
injuries. Around 22% of all the injuries were acquired due to fall (Australian Institute of
Health and Welfare., 2020).
“Age-standardised rates of injury deaths for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people were twice the rate for non-Indigenous people (97 and 48 deaths per 100,000
population, respectively)”
(Aihw.gov.au., 2020)
Statistics for another Country (U.S.A)
In the U.S., around 800,000 patients are hospitalized each year due to fall injury. It
has been seen that older people (65 years or older) are the most common victims of fall
injuries and about one out of five of them suffer from serious injuries such as broken bones or
brain injury (Cdc.gov., 2020). Falling down is the major cause of injuries in ageing adults –
fatal or nonfatal in nature (Bergen, Stevens & Burns, 2016).

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Prevention and Management
Since fall injuries are most common in the older age group, it is critical that necessary
precautions be taken to reduce the risk of them falling down. As people becomes older, their
bones become frail and the risk of sustaining an injury becomes higher due to unstable gait
(Wilbur, 2017). So it must be made sure that the incidence of falling is reduced as much as
possible.
The major way of reducing the fall injuries is assessing the risk factors and work
accordingly. If a person with high risk of falling is around, the surroundings must be assessed
to look for factors that increases their chance of falling. Identifying these factors and reducing
them is the best way to ensure fall prevention. This strategy must be utilized in healthcare
facilities were elderly and ill patients are admitted and hence have the highest risk of falling.
Assessing the risk including removing anything that may cause the patients to trip or
lose their balance. This includes cluttered and congested places. Also the patient must be
given tighter clothing so that they will not trip on loose fabrics. The room and the house must
be checked for any stray items lying around that may cause a hazard.
Risk assessment is also important on an individual level. Fall risk assessment is the
method that is used to evaluate the risk factors specifically related to mobility issues in an
individual. This includes balance, gait, posture and stability. Examples of such tests include
Timed Up and Go, Turn 180o test and others (Hamm et al., 2016). The patient must be
checked to see whether he has a high chance of falling and if yes, then why it is so.
Sometimes certain medications may cause them to loose balance and it must be known so
that the medical professional is able to guide them and aid them whenever needed (Cuevas-
Trisan, 2017). This is critical has it effectively reduces the chance of them falling. Different
fall risk screening tools should be implemented as well (Yokota et al., 2018).

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Role of Health Professionals
Medical professionals have a very important role in reducing the incidence of fall
injuries in the healthcare settings. The healthcare professionals who will be focused on are
Registered nurses and Bedside nurses.
The registered nurses have a vast variety of duties that include administering patient-
centred healthcare as well as leading the other nurses in their jobs. Needless to say, the
registered nurses can control the way how the care is given and how the environment should
be maintained. They must monitor the nursing facility and instruct the removal of any
furniture that may cause the patients to trip or lose their balance, as well as keep the floors
dry so they are not slippery (National Institute on Aging., 2020). They are also responsible
for monitoring the patients and conduct the necessary risk assessment tests (Park, 2018).
Hence, they can construct a personalized care plan for each patient as per their individual
requirements. This will enable the reduction of risk of falling and thus causing the injuries.
The registered nurses are also responsible for monitoring the medications as well as
delegating tasks. So if they find a specific medication that may cause imbalance as a side
effect, they can delegate individual staff for observing and aiding the high risk patients. This
way they can ensure that the risk is minimised.
The bedside nurses work very closely with the patients and are responsible for
directly administering care to the patients. Hence it is likely that they will be the first one to
notice if the patients are having any balance issues or if there is anything wrong with their
posture/gait (Lord et al., 2007). They must report the observations to the nursing leaders
(RNs) who can order the necessary tests for a proper risk assessment. The bedside nurses
must also make sure that the patients are wearing proper clothes and they do not trip over the
fabric. If needed, they must support the patients physically.

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Conclusion
From the above essay, we can conclude that by implementing the above steps by the
healthcare professionals and assessing the fall risk of the patients, it is possible to reduce the
occurrence of fall injuries in older adults as well as other ill patients.

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Reference
Aihw.gov.au. (2020). Retrieved 15 March 2020, from
https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/7c42913d-295f-4bc9-9c24-4e44eff4a04a/aihw-
aus-221.pdf.aspx?inline=true.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2020). Hospitalised injury among Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people 2011–12 to 2015–16, Summary - Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare. Retrieved 15 March 2020, from
https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/injury/hospitalised-injury-among-aboriginal-and-
torres-st/contents/summary.
Bergen, G., Stevens, M. R., & Burns, E. R. (2016). Falls and fall injuries among adults aged≥
65 years—United States, 2014. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 65(37), 993-
998.
Cdc.gov. (2020). Important Facts about Falls | Home and Recreational Safety | CDC Injury
Center. Retrieved 15 March 2020, from
https://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/falls/adultfalls.html.
Cuevas-Trisan, R. (2017). Balance problems and fall risks in the elderly. Physical Medicine
and Rehabilitation Clinics, 28(4), 727-737.
Hamm, J., Money, A. G., Atwal, A., & Paraskevopoulos, I. (2016). Fall prevention
intervention technologies: A conceptual framework and survey of the state of the
art. Journal of biomedical informatics, 59, 319-345.
Lord, S., Sherrington, C., Menz, H., & Close, J. (2007). Falls in Older People: Risk Factors
and Strategies for Prevention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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National Institute on Aging. (2020). Prevent Falls and Fractures. Retrieved 15 March 2020,
from https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/prevent-falls-and-fractures.
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.
Wilbur, J. (2017). Falls and Gait Disturbances in Older Patients.
Yokota, S., Tomotaki, A., Mohri, O., Endo, M., & Ohe, K. (2018). Evaluating the
effectiveness of a fall risk screening tool implemented in an electronic medical record
system. Journal of nursing care quality, 33(4), E1-E6.

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Appendix
1. My topic is:
_ Fall Injuries in Australia____________________________
2. The main concepts of the topic are:
Statistics of injury by fall AND Prevention of Fall Injury AND Role of Healthcare
Professional in prevention_
3. Other keywords I could use to search for these concepts are:
Fall Risk OR Risk of Fall OR Elderly Fall Risk OR Fall Injury OR Fall injury
intervention OR Fall Precaution OR Fall prevention OR Elderly Fall Prevention
4. Truncation, wildcards and phrase searching I could use are:
AND OR NOT * ,
5. My search strategy is:
A search was conducted on many databases using the above key words along other
phrases. The search was then filtered using the year limitation. Articles that provided
information on fall risk due to a specific disease were excluded. Most papers were
focused on the elderly and hence they were included.

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Database
searched
Search terms Limiters Results
PubMed Injury Falls Free Full Text, Last 10
Years, Humans
2250
PubMed injury falls AND elderly
AND prevention
Free Full Text, Last 10
Years, Humans
574
CINAHL Fall Injury Prevention Open Access, Journal
Article, Last Five Years
14664
CINAHL Fall Injury Prevention AND
Elderly
Open Access, Journal
Article, Last Five Years
4894
Google Scholar injury fall AND prevention
AND elderly
Since 2016 34800

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