Nottingham on Call supporting people with a falls risk
Published: Tuesday, 9 January 2024
Nottingham On Call offers a wide range of equipment options which can support someone with a falls risk. These options can be categorised in two ways:
Falls Prevention - equipment aimed at preventing a fall in the first place
Falls Management - equipment to alert when a fall has occurred in order to reduce the time a person is on the floor, i.e. getting help quickly.
There are also a number of factors that should be considered to ensure that any equipment supports the user as intended:
- Do they live on their own or have someone in the home to support them?
- Do they fall at night or during the day?
- Where are they at greatest risk of falling? In the house? If so, which room?
- What factors might be increasing the falls risk? For example: poor medication compliance.
- How are they likely to fall – is it a hard fall or more of a slump
- Are they likely to knock themselves out when having a fall or sustain a head injury and be unresponsiv
- How likely is it that the person will wear and/or correctly use the equipment provided for them?
Whether the person with the falls risk lives on their own, or is on their own for large periods, or whether they have someone in the home most of the time, will determine whether equipment linked to the 24/7 monitoring centre is needed, or if it's preferable for equipment which can alert locally in the home.
The types of equipment which could be helpful to try and to try and achieve Falls Prevention would be:-
- Night lights – to illuminate dark areas which may be a trip hazards e.g. an unlit hallway on the way to the toilet at night;
- Memrabel – to ensure medications are taken at the right time to prevent someone being woozy or dizzy from not taking them;
- Home safety alert – to alert someone in the home that help is needed and prevent the person at falls risk struggling to do things themselves.
With Falls Management it is all about getting help to the person as quickly as possible to prevent them lying on the floor. Unfortunately, the longer someone is on the floor the more likely it is they will need to go into hospital.
The obvious equipment to alert to a potential fall and to raise the alarm is simply the pendant which comes with our care alarm, or even a falls detector. The falls detector will automatically raise an alert at our monitoring centre if the wearer has a hard fall (hits the deck). It also has a panic button if the fall is a soft one (slump to the floor). Pendants and falls detectors can be wrist worn or neck worn depending on preference. There is also the mobile care alarm The GO which can a panic button as well as a built in falls detector.
Where someone may be a falls risk due to a specific type of scenario then there are options too. For example, someone unsteady on their feet may get up from their usual chair or from bed and then have a fall. Bed and chair sensors can be considered which will alert when the users leaves the bed / chair and does not return in a certain time, e.g. within 30 minutes.
For advice and support on all the falls prevention and falls management options offered by Nottingham on Call please get in touch with us. Call us on 0115 746 9101 Option 1 or email us at atservice@nottinghamcity.gov.uk or go to our contact page