Identifying Intrinsic and Extrinsic Risk Factors for Falls in Hospitalized Older Adults

Running head: EVIDENCE BASED NURSING RESEARCH
EVIDENCE BASED NURSING RESEARCH
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1EVIDENCE BASED NURSING RESEARCH
Selected paper
Haines, T. P., Lee, D. C. A., O'connell, B., McDermott, F., & Hoffmann, T. (2015). Why do
hospitalized older adults take risks that may lead to falls?. Health expectations, 18(2), 233-
249.
Introduction
One of the prominent health issues that is faced by the elderly population is falls. This
is mainly faced by the age group of 65 and above, where 20% of older population are in need
of medical attention because of their prevalent condition. Therefore this area of healthcare
needs researches to be conducted in order to determine the risk factors including then
intrinsic and the extrinsic risk factors (Lee et al., 2013). In reference to this, the paper
selected for the study presents a research on the identification of these intrinsic and the
extrinsic risk factors. This article was published in the journal Health expectations in the year
2015 in the 18th volume of the journal which had been co-authored by six authors. The title of
the journal projects a direct and clear question, which addresses the risk factors that might
result in falls. The abstract of the article is structured in an organised way that includes the
objective along with the design, setting and the participants. It also includes the main
variables studies along with main outcome measures, the results, the discussion and
conclusion. The background of the study shows that the behaviour of hospitalized older
adults can contribute to falls that leads to the adverse event that occurs during or after
hospitalization. The objective shows clearly that it is important to understand that why the
older adults take risk that end up in falls. The design of study selected is qualitative research
where the hospital patients are chosen as participants along with the informal caregivers and
the health professionals involved. From the result it was clear that the process of risk taking
were of different type which in conclusion revealed that there was an existence of tension

2EVIDENCE BASED NURSING RESEARCH
between taking risks which was part of rehabilitation and its effect on chances of falling
(Haines et al., 2015).
Literature review
Most of the times, risk has been defined as an act where implementation of goal-
directed options are provided. It has been seen that the conduction of the research is based on
the understanding of then utility theory. A study showed that this can be further classified
into those which can explain the differences existing between people who get involved in
taking risks and those that do not (Hill et al., 2014). Additionally those who explain the
differences that is present in between the situations which play a role in promoting risks by
considering most of the people. The situations that bring about risk aversion and those which
are involved in explaining both types of differences are also part of the classification. Data
from previous researches show that older hospital inpatients involve in the identification of
the factors which are associated with higher self-perceived risk of falling (Mihaljcic et al.,
2014). This involves the conceptually long with the probability of an outcome of fall during
hospitalization. In addition to this, there is a higher self-perceived risk related to injury in
cases where fall were to occur. Some studies also highlighted the regression models that are
related to older ages and individuals having better cognitive function who were independently
associated with the reduced risks of fall (Belita, Ford & Kirkpatrick, 2013). Some studies also
argued that hat inpatients who are the older adults have a tendency regarding approapriate
impression of the probability of risk of fall during the stay in hospital. However there is also a
tendency to underestimate the injury rates related with falls (Morello et al., 2015).