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Staff knowledge, attitudes and confidence levels for fall preventions in older person long-term care facilities: a cross-sectional study
BACKGROUND: Falls are the most common health problem affecting older people in long-term care facilities (LTCFs), with well-recognised adverse psychological and physical resident outcomes, and high staff burden and financial cost. LTCF staff knowledge and skills can play a vital role in providing an...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10521420/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37749541 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12877-023-04323-0 |
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author | Albasha, Neah McCullagh, Ruth Cornally, Nicola Timmons, Suzanne |
author_facet | Albasha, Neah McCullagh, Ruth Cornally, Nicola Timmons, Suzanne |
author_sort | Albasha, Neah |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Falls are the most common health problem affecting older people in long-term care facilities (LTCFs), with well-recognised adverse psychological and physical resident outcomes, and high staff burden and financial cost. LTCF staff knowledge and skills can play a vital role in providing and promoting fall prevention care. METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional survey study was conducted across 13 LTCF sites in the Southwest of Ireland; a sampling frame facilitated inclusion of a range of provider types and facility sizes. An existing questionnaire, based on fall prevention guidance, and examining staff knowledge, skills and attitudes, was distributed in physical and online formats. RESULT: The response rate was 15% (n = 155), predominantly healthcare assistants, staff nurses and senior nurses. Almost 90% expressed high confidence levels for delivering fall prevention interventions and being aware of how falls affect LTCFs. However, over half underestimated the fall rate in LTCFs, and only 60% had adequate knowledge. Longer experience in working with older people in healthcare services was associated with greater knowledge (p = .001) and confidence in fall prevention interventions (p = .01), while senior nurses had more knowledge than others (p = .01). LTCF staff had lowest knowledge about “identification systems for residents at high risk of falling”, “keeping confused residents near nursing stations”, “the effect of using antipsychotic medicine on falls”, “using a toileting regimen” and “staff responsibility regarding fall prevention efforts”. Despite their knowledge gaps, nearly 50% thought they had enough fall prevention training; their main preference for any further fall education training was face-to-face education. CONCLUSION: The results, with the caveat of a low response rate, show the need for interdisciplinary fall prevention training that is tailored to both the perceived learning needs and actual knowledge gap of LTCF staff and their preferences for learning delivery, as part of an overall approach to reducing fall-related adverse outcomes. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12877-023-04323-0. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10521420 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-105214202023-09-27 Staff knowledge, attitudes and confidence levels for fall preventions in older person long-term care facilities: a cross-sectional study Albasha, Neah McCullagh, Ruth Cornally, Nicola Timmons, Suzanne BMC Geriatr Research BACKGROUND: Falls are the most common health problem affecting older people in long-term care facilities (LTCFs), with well-recognised adverse psychological and physical resident outcomes, and high staff burden and financial cost. LTCF staff knowledge and skills can play a vital role in providing and promoting fall prevention care. METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional survey study was conducted across 13 LTCF sites in the Southwest of Ireland; a sampling frame facilitated inclusion of a range of provider types and facility sizes. An existing questionnaire, based on fall prevention guidance, and examining staff knowledge, skills and attitudes, was distributed in physical and online formats. RESULT: The response rate was 15% (n = 155), predominantly healthcare assistants, staff nurses and senior nurses. Almost 90% expressed high confidence levels for delivering fall prevention interventions and being aware of how falls affect LTCFs. However, over half underestimated the fall rate in LTCFs, and only 60% had adequate knowledge. Longer experience in working with older people in healthcare services was associated with greater knowledge (p = .001) and confidence in fall prevention interventions (p = .01), while senior nurses had more knowledge than others (p = .01). LTCF staff had lowest knowledge about “identification systems for residents at high risk of falling”, “keeping confused residents near nursing stations”, “the effect of using antipsychotic medicine on falls”, “using a toileting regimen” and “staff responsibility regarding fall prevention efforts”. Despite their knowledge gaps, nearly 50% thought they had enough fall prevention training; their main preference for any further fall education training was face-to-face education. CONCLUSION: The results, with the caveat of a low response rate, show the need for interdisciplinary fall prevention training that is tailored to both the perceived learning needs and actual knowledge gap of LTCF staff and their preferences for learning delivery, as part of an overall approach to reducing fall-related adverse outcomes. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12877-023-04323-0. BioMed Central 2023-09-25 /pmc/articles/PMC10521420/ /pubmed/37749541 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12877-023-04323-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Albasha, Neah McCullagh, Ruth Cornally, Nicola Timmons, Suzanne Staff knowledge, attitudes and confidence levels for fall preventions in older person long-term care facilities: a cross-sectional study |
title | Staff knowledge, attitudes and confidence levels for fall preventions in older person long-term care facilities: a cross-sectional study |
title_full | Staff knowledge, attitudes and confidence levels for fall preventions in older person long-term care facilities: a cross-sectional study |
title_fullStr | Staff knowledge, attitudes and confidence levels for fall preventions in older person long-term care facilities: a cross-sectional study |
title_full_unstemmed | Staff knowledge, attitudes and confidence levels for fall preventions in older person long-term care facilities: a cross-sectional study |
title_short | Staff knowledge, attitudes and confidence levels for fall preventions in older person long-term care facilities: a cross-sectional study |
title_sort | staff knowledge, attitudes and confidence levels for fall preventions in older person long-term care facilities: a cross-sectional study |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10521420/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37749541 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12877-023-04323-0 |
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