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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| The construction of the risk of falling among and by older people | | Author(s) | Claire Ballinger, Sheila Payne |
| Journal title | Ageing & Society, vol 22, part 3, May 2002 |
| Pages | pp 305-324 |
| Keywords | Falls ; At risk ; Day hospitals ; Social surveys ; Methodology. |
| Annotation | Risk is prominent in explanations of health and illness, but its construction is often constrained by a rationalist perspective focusing on physical causes and functional outcomes, and presenting risk as external to the self and as predictable. This paper describes an empirical study of the ways in which risk was realised and managed in a day hospital for older people. An ethnographic approach, with participant observation and semi-structured interviews, and discourse analysis were used to explore these issues with staff and 15 users. Whilst service providers were orientated to managing physical risk, through medication and attention to risk reduction in the physical environment, service users were more concerned with the risk to their personal and social identities, and they more frequently described its manifestations in interpersonal exchanges, sometimes as infantilisation and stereotyping. This understanding of the potential for falls among older people to elucidate a broader interpretation of risk is developed, revealing that it is commonly constructed as a challenge to a person's self-image and identity. Such constructions help to explain older people's responses to complex health problems, and to the services and treatments that attempt to solve them. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-020812202 A |
| Classmark | OLF: CA3: LDD: 3F: 3D |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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