The elderly are the most vulnerable to falls when compared to those of various ages. As people get older, their chances of falling increase. This is due to the fact that older persons are more prone to have problems with walking and balance. Because of their limited movement, vision impairment, and other issues, they are especially vulnerable. Falls are the leading cause of injury, hospitalization, and nursing home admissions among the elderly (Prabhakaran et al., 2020). In some cases, these falls can result in serious injuries, dislocations, hospitalization, and even death. In addition, falls are a common cause of injury and hospitalization among other senior citizens. Patients frequently get injuries as a result of poorly fitted hospital rooms and hallways.
The falls may have severely negative consequences for a patient and may result in legal action against health-care institutions. As a result, developing preventative system measures is critical. When assessing the risk of falling in elderly patients, the health care provider uses a variety of techniques to assess the patient’s balance, gait, and strength. A Stage Balance Test to monitor balance, a Thirty-second Chair Stand Test to check both balance and strength, and a Timed Up-and-Go to check gait are among the tools available.
Clinical inquiry is typically used to develop evidence-based practice (EBP). Clinical inquiry is also carried out utilizing the PICOT model (Granger, 2020). The clinical issue of interest in this work is assessing fall risks in geriatric care. One PICOT question is developed based on clinical domains depending on this area of interest. “Can a multidisciplinary nurse-led educational team (I) be compared to customary care (C) lower fall risks within one week following discharge (T) in older geriatric patients, especially those over sixty years and discharged from hospital?” In the initials of the word PICOT, P stands for the population of geriatric patients, I stand for the intervention, such as pain treatment, and O stands for the outcome. The letter C stands for comparison, as in the comparison of pharmacological and non-pharmacological pain management strategies. The acronym O stands for outcome, which refers to pain management, and T indicates the thirty-day or one-month period for reaching the goal of this topic of interest. As a result, the key searches for peer-reviewed papers employed by this paper were Geriatric care for older patients, re-admission, one week (seven days), and nurse-led intervention.
Additionally, the Walden University Library’s PubMed and CINAHL databases were used to seek for scholarly evidence in this study. The essential terms were typed into the database’s search engine to discover studies that matched them. A total of 300 studies were found in the first attempt. This was before employing Boolean operators and restricting the search by publication date, excluding systematic reviews and meta-analyses (Gusenbauer & Haddaway, 2020). The total number of studies retrieved was two after combining the search phrases with the Boolean operator “AND” and utilizing the other indicated filters. These were now highly precise studies dealing with interventions in Geriatric care that addressed the evaluation of fall risks in very particular terms. Using the database’s in-built filters is one strategy that may be used to improve the rigor, specificity, and effectiveness of a database search on the above-mentioned PICOT query. A good example is limiting the search to only randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or trials. Second, in repeat searches, use synonyms for the search terms. This form of filtering ensures that even articles produced with similar but relevant terms to the chosen topic of interest are included in the search.
References
Granger, B. (2020). Life after PICOT: Taking the next step in a clinical inquiry project. AACN Advanced Critical Care, 31(1), 92-97.
Gusenbauer, M., & Haddaway, N. R. (2020). Which academic search systems are suitable for systematic reviews or meta‐analyses? Evaluating retrieval qualities of Google scholar, PubMed, and 26 other resources.Research Synthesis Methods, 11(2), 181-217.
Prabhakaran, K., Gogna, S., Pee, S., Samson, D. J., Con, J., & Latifi, R. (2020). Falling again? falls in geriatric adults—Risk factors and outcomes associated with recidivism. Journal of Surgical Research, 247, 66-76.