Falls prevention in patients who call an ambulance because of a fall and who are not transported to hospital

Overview

“This study showed that the rate of falls in older people at home could be halved by a community falls prevention service”

This study was led by Dr Pip Logan (Division of Rehabilitation and Ageing).

She had noticed that large numbers of people fall at home and call an ambulance as a result.

Frequently, they are not taken to hospital by patient consent or insistence. Typically, no further action is taken, and often the falls recur. She postulated that a community falls prevention service might be both effective and acceptable.

She therefore worked with the East Midlands Ambulance Service and the community falls prevention teams in the Nottingham area and conducted a RCT with an integral economic study.

She found that referral of these patients by the ambulance service to the community falls prevention team led to a large fall in the rate of falls. This was not achieved by restricting the activity of the older people – on the contrary the service led to increased levels of activities of daily living. Better still, the service led to lower levels of fear of falling, which can be as distressing as the physical consequences of falling.

Key findings

"Community falls prevention for people who call an emergency ambulance after a fall: randomised controlled trial." Phillipa A Logan, C A C Coupland, J R F Gladman, O Sahota, V Stoner-Hobs, K Robertson, V Tomlinson, M Ward, T Sach and A J Avery, BMJ 2010;340:c2102, doi: 10.1136/bmj.c2102.