By Barb Nadeau –
Fall Prevention Awareness Day is September 22, a time for health care and senior care professionals across the country to gather, discuss, and recognize the dangers associated with tragic falls.
Falling is no laughing matter for seniors, older adults, and their family members. Every 11 seconds a senior citizen is taken to the emergency room because of a fall, and every 19 seconds someone dies as a result of a fall.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each year three Million older adults are treated in emergency departments and more than 800,000 are hospitalized each year because of falls. One out of five falls results in a serious injury such as broken bones or a head injury, and falls are the most common cause of traumatic brain injury. Just one unfortunate fall costs the average senior citizen more than $30,000. In 2015, the total medical costs nationwide for falls was a total of more than $50 Billion, with Medicare and Medicaid shouldering about 75% of these costs.
From our earliest days, we all have experienced falls. As children we gained greater awareness, not only of our surroundings but of our body’s abilities, and our movement spatially through our environments. Watching babies grow, we all recognize how important is it for them to crawl before they walk, and it is enchanting to watch youngsters when their sense of balance grows. Many of us adults, if not most of us, however, have a tendency to do less, to move less, and to walk less as we grow older. From sitting in a chair or on a bed to standing, older adults and the elderly are more likely to remain in those two planes. Our days of sitting on the ground or crawling are long gone, and we don’t wish those days to return. So, we become less aware of what it feels like to be on the ground, and less able to move from floor to standing to floor again, that is unless we find ourselves falling to the ground unexpectedly.
For some, a fall may be a minor occurrence, for others it may result in a broken arm or rib, and for others it can be a devastating and life-threatening occurrence. In my mind, the definition of “older adult” or “senior” differs from the term “frail elderly” only in our propensity to fall or in the result of a devastating fall.
My mother died from a fall and a shattered hip. I must recognize though, that I was losing my mother for several years earlier, because her arthritis and fear of falling caused her to retreat into her home and limit her outside experiences. This resulted in minor to advancing dementia as a vicious cycle of fear increased her reluctance to move.
Would her life have been better if she had stayed mobile and active, full of movement, breathing in more oxygen, using her muscles and building bone density? Possibly. We all will decline some day, but living in fear is something I choose not to do. I hope I always will remember and will always want to move.
Health care professionals have designated September 22, the first day of Fall, as Fall Prevention Day to bring more awareness to the dangers of falls. They went to bring attention to falling as a major public health issue, how screening can help older adults assess their individual fall risk, and to identify the best prevention programs and practices to help prevent catastrophic falls for older adults.
Falling or seeing another person falling has the effect of gripping our attention, whether we are watching television or a movie, but especially in real life. If we can just get our attention focused on preventing falls, wouldn’t life be better for all of us?
Barb Nadeau works for Senior Services Associates of Kane, Kendall & McHenry Counties as a Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) & Transportation Coordinator. She is a freelance writer and television host. She can be reached at bnadeau@seniorservicesassoc.org.