Falls are the leading cause of unintentional injury at home, with 30% of adults over the age of 65 experiencing a fall each year. In 2019, the Saskatoon Fire Department performed 1,025 lifts for people who had fallen and were unable to get up.
Remembering When is an educational program, spearheaded by the Fire Department, focussed on helping older adults prevent fires and falls in their homes. The program is centred around 16 key safety messages and utilizes group presentations as well as individualized home visits. Especially empowering for older adults is a demonstration on how to get up if you’ve fallen and haven’t hurt yourself. The goal of the program is to help older adults eliminate fire and fall hazards, enabling them to age safely in their home.
The Remembering When program utilizes partnerships with the Saskatchewan Health Authority, other agencies and volunteers, mostly retired health care professionals, to proactively help the older adults in our community as well as those lifted by the Fire Department.
A mixed-method research project was developed and is composed of interviews with past clients and volunteers of the program. Combined with quantitative and qualitative data analysis using NVivo, we demonstrated the effectiveness of the program and identified areas where it could be improved.
The presentation will include a discussion of the findings to support the leverage of community organizations to advance fire and fall safety among older adults living in community.
Elder abuse (e.g., financial, physical, psychological) is a major public health problem, with an estimated 4%-10% prevalence rate in Canada. In spite of the increasing research on elder abuse, little is known about what contributes to elder abuse in immigrant communities in Canada.
The purpose of this mixed methods study was to identify key risk factors of elder abuse in the Tamil community in Toronto. Six group interviews were held with 43 older Tamil immigrants (22 women and 21 men). Participants individually rated 13 risk factors for their importance in contributing to elder abuse. Participants then engaged in a group discussion to elaborate on additional risk factors unique to the Tamil community. The discussion was audio-recorded, translated into English, and transcribed, and then analyzed thematically.
Participants rated four factors as important in increasing risk of elder abuse: lack of knowledge of English, emotional dependence on caregiver, income, and physical dependence on others. They identified three additional risk factors: financial dependence, language barriers, and transportation issues. Participants clarified that physical, financial, and social dependence on their children (enforced by social, economic, and immigrant policies), contribute to the risk of abuse. Older women were more vulnerable to financial abuse and expressed that the stigma of being a widow made them vulnerable to elder abuse.
The findings highlight the importance of increasing healthcare providers’ awareness of factors increasing the risk of elder abuse, and engaging providers and the Tamil community in designing services that address these factors and prevent abuse.
With the aging of the population, the number of older adult drivers is expected to grow rapidly. It is estimated that over 60% of seniors will have a health problem that could affect their ability to drive safely. In Quebec, at-risk drivers are referred to the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec to do a road test. In addition to being expensive, the road test is anxiety-provoking for seniors, which can negatively affect their performance. This assessment process does not provide any support to seniors in case of a loss of licence, although there is considerable research outlining the consequences associated with driving cessation. Some authors deplore the lack of programs to prepare seniors for this transition. Therefore, researchers maintain that before doing a road test, it would be important to carry out a clinical assessment of at-risk older drivers to identify clearly fit or unfit drivers, and to refer to the licensing authorities only those for whom a road test is necessary. The nursing profession is well positioned to respond to this issue. Nurses are allowed to judge a person’s fitness to drive in certain provinces of Canada, such as Quebec and Ontario. Unfortunately, there’s no objective clinical assessment tool available to help them in screening, assessment and support of elderly drivers. The research project’s goal is to develop a guide for the assessment and support of seniors in matters of road safety for nurses. This presentation will present the research project and its results.
Introduction: This presentation focuses on the process of updating and evaluating an existing Pressure Injury Prevention program for older adults in an inpatient setting by improving health literacy best practice recommendations for high quality, actionable materials.
Methods: An interprofessional and client/ family partner team collaborated over six months to re-develop the resource. An evidence-based 12 step framework for writing patient and family health information by Wizowski, Harper & Hutchings (2014) guided the process.
Outcome/Take home message: There was an improvement in readability after the redesign using three validated tools. The qualitative evaluation found 9 out of 10 Complex Continuing Care patients and families agreed / strongly agreed that the brochure was easy to read and understand. Several lessons were learned throughout the redesign: (1) the rigour required to create best practice resources and engage all stakeholders, (2) the importance of early collaboration and feedback from clients/families as well as interprofessional team members, (3) the importance of evaluating the resource with the target learners, and (4) the need to develop a formal plan to embed the completed resource into clinical patient/family education practice.
Wizowski, L., Harper, T., & Hutchins, T. (2014). Writing health information for patients and families (4th Ed.). Hamilton Health Sciences. Retrieved from https://muhcpatienteducation.mcgill.ca/Writing_HI_Edition4.pdf