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This conference provided an evidence-based update on the interdisciplinary approach to the prevention of falls in older adults in three primary practice areas: acute care, long term care and community care, with three exciting keynote speakers - one in each of the three primary practice areas.
Dr. Marcia Carr is a clinical nurse specialist in the Fraser Health Older Adult Program, located in Vancouver, BC. One of her clinically designated responsibilities is falls and injury prevention across all Fraser Health health services.
She is an Adjunct Professor at Simon Fraser University in the Gerontology Research Department; at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in the School of Nursing and at the University of Victoria School of Nursing. She is also an Assistant Clinical Professor at McMaster University School of Nursing.
She is currently co-Principle Investigator on several research studies - "Confidence and Compliance post-fractured hip following informal caregiver education provided in-hospital class" and "Nurses ability to embed "Personhood" principles into their daily practice." She has also been working with a collaborative research group on safe, elder-friendly clothing with hip protectors built in.
Professor Carr has just completed writing a chapter on dysphagia and aspiration pneumonia in a dental text focusing on frail elders which is expected to be out by mid Fall 2010. Finally, she lead the CNS Collaborative for the BC Acute Care Geriatric Nurse Network (ACGNN) and Geriatric Emergency Network Initiative (GENI).
Her keynote address was titled "Integrated Programming for Fall and Injury Prevention in Acute Care." She also provided a breakout session on Acute Falls Prevention Clinical Practice Guidelines.
Dr. Dorothy Baker is a Research Scientist/Scholar in Internal Medicine, Geriatrics at Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven Connecticut where she currently is principal investigator of the statewide Connecticut Collaboration for Fall Prevention. She is a nurse practitioner with clinical experience in outpatient and homecare, having earned her doctorate in public health at Yale. In addition to faculty positions teaching family nurse practitioners, she has conducted community-based research on topics that include prevention of falls, delirium and functional decline, funded by the National Institutes on Aging as well as private foundations.
Dr. Baker is an author of several articles published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Medical Care, Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, The Gerontologist, Journal for Healthcare Quality, Canadian Journal on Aging and Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
She presented her keynote address on: "Moving Evidence into Practice: Preventing Falls among Older Adults Who Live in the Community." She also provided a breakout session on the American Geriatrics Society Clinical Guidelines for Falls Prevention.
Stephen Robinovitch is a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology, and in the School of Engineering Science, at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He received his B.App.Sc. from the University of British Columbia in 1988, and his Ph.D. in Medical Engineering from Harvard/MIT in 1995. Before commencing his position at SFU in 2000, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. He currently holds a Canada Research Chair award (in Injury Prevention and Mobility Biomechanics), and is the previous recipient of a CIHR New Investigator Award.
Dr. Robinovitch's research focuses on the cause and prevention of falls and fall-related injuries, especially in older adults. His group is one of the few to have examined the descent and impact stages of falls, through experiments conducted in his unique "falling laboratory" and mathematical modeling. In 2007, he served as Principal Investigator for the CIHR-funded International Hip Protector Research Group, which recently published recommended guidelines for biomechanical testing and clinical trials of hip protectors. Currently, he is leading a study to record, for the first time, "real life" falls experienced by older adults residing the long-term care environment, through networks of digital video cameras. To date, his team has video-captured and analyzed over 200 falls in older adults. These data challenge previous evidence (based on witness- or self-reports) of the cause and circumstances of falls, and provide a unique opportunity for examining how fall mechanisms associate with physical and cognitive function.
Dr. Robinovitch presented his keynote address on "Video capture of the mechanisms of falls in older adults: emerging results from the CIHR-funded Technology for Injury Prevention in Seniors (TIPS) program." He also provided a breakout session on "Wearable hip protectors and compliant flooring for fall injury prevention in long-term care facilities."
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