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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| The meaning of the experience of anticipating falling | | Author(s) | James A Shaw, Denise M Connelly, Carol L McWilliam |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 35, no 9, October 2015 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, October 2015 |
| Pages | pp 1839-1863 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Falls ; At risk ; Preventative medicine ; Living in the community ; Social surveys ; Canada. |
| Annotation | Falling in later life continues to be a critical issue in gerontology research, health professional practice and ageing health policy. However, much research in the area of fall risk and fall prevention neglects the meaning of the experiences of older people themselves. This humanistic interpretive phenomenological study explored the meaning of the experience of anticipating falling from the perspective of older people, in order to foster a more person-focused approach to fall risk assessment and fall prevention. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine participants over the age of 65 living independently in the community in a medium-sized Canadian city. Follow-up interviews with two key informants were completed to inform the emerging interpretations. For older participants living in the community, the experience of anticipating falling meant confronting their embodied lived-identity in the context of ageing. Experiential learning shaped how participants understood the meaning of falling, which constituted tacit knowledge of vulnerability and anxiety with respect to falling. Findings emphasise the importance of critically reflecting on the social experience of anticipating falling in order to develop effective and relevant fall prevention interventions, programmes and policies. A lifeworld-led approach to fall risk assessment and fall prevention resonates with these findings, and may encourage health-care providers to adopt a sustained focus on embodied lived identity and quality of life when engaging older people in fall prevention activities. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-150918202 A |
| Classmark | OLF: CA3: LK2: K4: 3F: 7S |
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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