Common characteristics of falls in the older adult population in the acute care, inpatient rehabilitation and skilled nursing facility settings
Cheryl Lehman, PhD, RN
Clinical Associate Professor,
School of Nursing
UT Health Science Center San Antonio
Brief Bio
Dr. Lehman received her BSN from Maryville University and her MSN in adult nursing and PhD in Preventive Medicine & Community Health (Rehabilitation Sciences track) from UTMB. Her clinical experiences include medical-surgical nursing, rehabilitation nursing and geriatric nursing. Dr. Lehman is board certified as a rehabilitation nurse, as a gerontological nurse, and as a clinical nurse specialist. Her research interest includes issues such as access to care and community reintegration.
Mentors
Amol Karmarkar, PhD; Ken Ottenbacher, PhD, OTR
Description
Falls in older adults cause significant morbidity and mortality in the United States healthcare system, and, as such, incur a significant amount of expense. It is not known if there are common characteristics of older adults who fall in varied settings. It makes sense that, if common characteristics exist, these characteristics can be addressed in a coordinated manner rather than in setting-specific isolation. Falls are of course multifactorial. Some risk factors may be exclusive to setting, some to patient characteristics, and some to particular illnesses or disabilities. We hope that through examination of the Medicare data in the 3 settings (acute care, SNF and IRF) we can extract factors that can be addressed to reduce the incidence of falls in the older adult admitted to acute care, skilled nursing facility or inpatient rehabilitation facility.