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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Epidemiology of ambulance responses to older people who have fallen in New South Wales, Australia | | Author(s) | Paul M Simpson |
| Journal title | Australasian Journal on Ageing, vol 332, no 3, September 2013 |
| Publisher | Wiley Blackwell, September 2013 |
| Pages | pp 171-176 |
| Source | http://www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ajag |
| Keywords | Falls ; Ambulance services ; Accident & emergency depts ; Admission [hospitals] ; Australia. |
| Annotation | The aim of this study was to quantify the size and scope of the operational burden for a large ambulance service arising from older people who had fallen and to describe this population. The authors carried out a retrospective analysis of ambulance records from New South Wales, Australia for emergency calls classified as 'falls' in the period from July 2008 to June 2009. There were 42,331 responses to people aged 65 years or older, constituting 5.1% of total emergency workload. The median age of patients was 83 (interquartile range 76-87) and 62% were women. The transport rate was 76%. Transport to hospital was more likely during the day and on weekends. Findings of the study showed that falls by older people constitute approximately 5% of all emergency responses, of which one quarter are not transported to emergency department (ED) after paramedic assessment. Increasing the sophistication of ambulance dispatch processes to older people who have fallen and continuing with the development of new models of care aimed at decreasing unnecessary transports to the EDs should be a priority when planning ambulance service delivery for older people who have fallen. (JL) |
| Accession Number | CPA-131003210 A |
| Classmark | OLF: O8: LD6: LD:QKH: 7YA |
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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