Managing and keeping control: A qualitative synthesis of nursing and care staff strategies to prevent older people from falling

Abstract

Aim: To better understand formal care providers' role in fall prevention.

Design: Qualitative synthesis as part of an integrative review.

Data sources: Fifteen electronic databases were consulted with the time limit being December 2017. Studies included were qualitative primary studies on formal care providers and fall prevention of people over 65 years of age in health care facilities. 17 studies were included.

Review methods: Qualitative researchers carried out a critical appraisal and abstraction of the studies retained. Primary studies were imported into Nvivo 12 software; grounded theory procedures of constant comparison, microanalysis, coding, development of memos and diagrams were completed concurrently in a continuous growing process of data conceptualization. Analysis was iterative; it started with open coding and ended with the development of an integrative memo.

Findings: Primary studies were synthesized with the emerging core category of "Managing and keeping control" and described by the emerging strategies of risk management, risk control and articulation work. These three categories account for the formal care providers' role in fall prevention in health care facilities.

Conclusion: Fall prevention is not given by a series of means and instruments; it is rather built in the interactions between formal care providers and the material and social world. The interactive character of prevention implies that outcomes cannot always be anticipated.

Impact: Although falls are one of the most researched clinical problems in nursing, the role played by nursing and care staff is dispersed and scantily documented. Formal care providers alternate risk management with risk control strategies to prevent older people from falling in health care facilities, they also resort to the articulation of the health care team as a complementary strategy. This review shows the dynamic character of fall prevention, which is something that has tended to go unnoticed in the literature and in policy.

Keywords: care providers; fall prevention; falls; nursing; older people; qualitative synthesis; systematic review.