Risk of falls and Effect of a Health Education Program in Prevention of Falls among Elderly in Geriatric Homes in Cairo, Egypt

AbstractBackground: Geriatric Falls are considered as one of the serious public health problems, as they are common causes of morbidity mortality and poor quality of life. Health education intervention programs for fall prevention improves knowledge and number of falls among elderly.Aim: To assess risk of falling and home safety against falls among a group of elderly residents in Geriatric homes in Cairo, Egypt. Also, to explore the extent of falls` knowledge and evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention education program delivered to the elderly participants.Methods: A quasi-experimental interventional study was conducted upon 120 elderly participants in 7 geriatric homes in different districts in Cairo. The interview questionnaire included sociodemographic, general geriatric health, falls` risk assessment, geriatric home safety, falls` knowledge and falls` history sections. Educational Intervention was provided as a series of lectures to the elderly in the selected geriatric homes about falls related topics. Participants were interviewed for 3 times, before the intervention (pretest), after the intervention (posttest), and 6 months later (follow up posttest)Results: There was statistical significant improvement in the knowledge scores of geriatric participants regards different falls` topics in the posttest and follow up (6 months posttest) after implementation of the education intervention in comparison with the pretest scores (P=0.00). Elderly participants who experienced falling decreased from (35.8%) in the pre-test to (27.4 %) in the 6 months post-test after the education intervention.Conclusions: The health education intervention proved to be effective in increasing knowledge and reducing number of falls among geriatric participants.