The purpose of this paper is to define the main steps in the research on “Elderly Fall Prevention.” The first step is to find relevant information on the topic. To do that, I need to select contemporary studies, which means I have to exclude research older than five years old from the search since they would be outdated. The next step is to examine the found studies and choose the ones that cover the topic of fall prevention in more detailed ways than others, judging by their names and abstracts from the articles. Many articles are concentrated on some specific aspect of the topic. For example, they explore only the risk factors for elderly falls. The others are descriptive and do not provide any proof of the effectiveness of the tools they depict. These articles are not suitable for the study as they do not provide all the needed information. Once the studies that contain all the necessary information are found, the next step is to examine the evidence that these studies provide.
The rationale for my article selection was the article’s relevance and the evidence base. Following all the steps mentioned above, I have checked more than ten sources. They were published between 2018 and 2021, which made their studies relevant. I picked three studies that explored the tools or programs for fall prevention. One of them was a systematic review of technologies for preventing falls, and the other one was a description of the physical activity program as an intervention. Both of them did not contain a solid evidence base. I chose the article Implementation of the Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths, and Injuries Initiative in Primary Care: An Outcome Evaluation by Johnston et al.
In search of evidence, I examined the design and methods of the research. This article studies how The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths, and Injuries (STEADI) initiative influences elderly falls in large medical care in New York (Johnston et al., 2018). The study uses univariate and multivariate analyses and provides quantitative data that shows the effectiveness of the implementation of the STEADI initiative. The evidence given in the article seems to be compelling.
The study is based on classifying elderly patients into three groups. The first one is the group of elderly patients who are at risk of falls and have the Fall Plan of Care. The second one is patients in the risk group with no FPOC, and the third one is patients who are not included in the risk group. The research shows the results of the analysis of the effectiveness of using the STEADI initiative among each group of patients (Johnston et al., 2018). Based on these results, the following PICO question should be used for the study of this article. Would the fall prevention intervention influence the number of falls with elderly patients in the at-risk group and with FPOC compared to patients at-risk without FPOC and patients in the no-risk group?
The PICO question is appropriate for this article because it helps to formulate a prognosis regarding implementing STEADI as an intervention for preventing falls. The question contains all aspects: population of interest (elderly patients), intervention (the STEADI initiative), outcome (decrease of falls), and comparison (the influence of using STEADI on different groups). The question refers to the patient’s problems and leads to eliciting the answer.
Reference
Johnston, Y.A., Bergen, G., Bauer, M., Parker, E.M., Wentworth, L., McFadden, M., Reome, C., & Garnett, M. (2018). Implementation of the stopping elderly accidents, deaths, and injuries initiative in primary care: an outcome evaluation. The Gerontologist, 59(6), 1182–1191. Web.