Carers' concern for older people falling at home: An integrative review

Abstract

© 2020 American Physiological Society. All rights reserved. Falls, the leading cause of injury and death among older people, can have a significant psychosocial impact on carers. Carers play a crucial role in caring for older persons at home and in fall prevention. This review, which included 15 studies, aimed to identify carers' concern about older people falling and its impact. We identified that most carers had concerns about repeated falls in older people, unknown consequences of falls and care recipients' non-adherence to fall prevention advice. These concerns, in turn, affect carers' physical and psychological health, lifestyle, caregiving burden and use of fall prevention strategies. This paper highlights the importance of recognising carers' fall concern so as to identify carers' needs and awareness of fall prevention in older people living at home. Greater insight into carers' fall concern could facilitate the implementation of new strategies to manage older people's fall risk as well as improve carers' well-being.

RAS ID

30839

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

5-22-2020

ISSN

00375675

Volume

61

Issue

5

Funding Information

Australian Government Research Training Programme Scholarship

PubMed ID

31680184

School

School of Nursing and Midwifery

Copyright

free_to_read

Publisher

Singapore Medical Association

Comments

Ang, S. G. M., O’Brien, A. P., & Wilson, A. (2020). Carers’ concern for older people falling at home: An integrative review. Singapore Medical Journal, 61(5), 272-280. https://doi.org/10.11622/smedj.2019142

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.11622/smedj.2019142