By Leigh Dawson
Associate Professor Anne-Marie Hill, Project Leader and Early Career Research Fellow in The University of Notre Dame Australia’s School of Physiotherapy, has received a $570,000 grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) to investigate and recommend educational strategies to mitigate falls in older people after hospital discharge.
With fall injuries being Australia’s leading cause of injury-related hospitalisation in older people, Associate Professor Hill hopes this research will deliver improved reforms in patient education and contribute to maintaining the independence of the country’s ageing population.
Associate Professor Hill said more action needed to be taken in falls prevention to ensure Australia’s ageing population remained injury free and thus able to enjoy a high quality of life, with the estimated hospital costs for falls-related incidents in 2007-08 totalling more than $645 million.
The aim of the investigation is to determine whether the provision of tailored falls prevention educational material, such as multi-media tools and professional consultations after hospital discharge, can reduce fall rates in older people through behavioural changes.
“When older people go home from hospital, it is a high-risk time for falls and we want to find out if our patient-focused education, which helps older people to plan for the discharge period, will reduce falls,” Associate Professor Hill said.
“Our research has shown that older people may not have high levels of knowledge and motivation to prevent falls, so providing education could be a good solution to this. We previously have found that providing individual patient education in hospital can reduce falls in hospital by older people, leading to us thinking that providing older patients with high-quality education can assist them to take on effective falls-prevention activities, so this program will expand on these findings.”
The research involves a random trial of 390 patients, divided into two groups, with one receiving educational intervention and the other receiving social intervention. The rates of falls six months after hospital discharge and the health-related quality of life of the two groups will then be measured, recorded and assessed for final evaluation.
The research team comprises Associate Professor Hill, Professor Max Bulsara and Jacqui Francis-Coad (Notre Dame), Associate Professor Terrence Haines and Den Ching Angel Lee (Monash University), Professor Christopher Etherton-Beer (University of Western Australia), Dr Steven McPhail (Queensland University of Technology), Professor Meg Morris (La Trobe University), Dr Ronald Shorr (Malcom Randall VA Medical Centre, Florida, USA), and Dr Nicholas Waldron (WA Department of Health).
A second collaborative project in the School of Physiotherapy will also be supported by the NHMRC with a grant of $970,000. The project, led by the University of New South Wales, sees Notre Dame Associate Professor Ben Wand contribute his skills to finding a new treatment for chronic lower-back pain.
Professor Bulsara also joins Professor Tom Brett and Associate Professor Diane Arnold-Reed from the School of Medicine, Fremantle as part of a team which will examine whether the continuity of primary care can reduce demand on emergency department presentations and hospital admissions. NHMRC has funded this project, led by Curtin University, to the tune of $790,000 over the next four years.
Marc Fellman, Director of Notre Dame’s Research Office, said that NHMRC project grants are, based on the evidence, increasingly competitive and that the recent successes of Anne-Marie and her team, Ben, Max, Tom and Diane, are indicative of high quality research and effective collaborations.