| Popis: |
In Switzerland, the incidence of falls among people over 65 years is about 30% per year. Thus, fall prevention is an important means to increase quality of life among the elderly. We present a project aiming to increase the effectiveness of fall prevention of outpatients by improving interprofessional collaboration between health professionals. The project was implemented in two rural and two urban regions between 2014 and 2016 with approximately 20% of the population over 65 years. In meetings which included general practitioners, physio- and occupational therapists, home care nurses and informal carers, tools for reporting fall risk, training and sensitizing media campaigns were developed. The aim of the study was to evaluate strengths and challenges of this project from the involved health professionals’ perspective by using an online survey and qualitative interviews. One of the project’s strengths is the training which contributed to an improvement of fall prevention. With respect to the challenges, the involved health professionals confirm that the additional efforts made are useful to improve health care services but are time consuming and are so far not remunerated for some categories of health professionals. Lessons learned on a micro and meso level indicate that the involved health professionals strongly support interprofessional collaboration in fall prevention. However, time and financial constraints challenge the implementation. On a macro level, potential ways to improve the project are to provide all involved health professionals with appropriate financial remuneration. The innovation of this project consists in its effort to build on existing networks while standardizing collaboration. |
