The Interior Health Authority is offering local seniors a free program on fall prevention.
The eight-week course will involve two, one-hour sessions per week on Wednesdays and Fridays at the Seniors Centre.
While it’s not vigorous, the program will focus on proprioception, which is the body’s sensation of balance and positioning, and core strength where appropriate, physical therapist Graeme Beverley said.
Two physiotherapy assistants from the local hospital will run the program.
Beverley said with the Interior Health Authority’s mandate moving toward prevention, it made sense to try this program out as a pilot.
It will include some balance testing in the beginning and at the end to measure if participants have had any improvements.
If it’s found to be successful, the hope is to run it again, he said.
It will also include an education piece related to reducing trip hazards around the house.
Each year, falls in elderly population cost the Canadian health system approximately $3 billion, according to Interior Health.
About half of all seniors’ falls that result in hospitalization occur at home.
“It’s really designed to teach the elderly some exercises they can do at home, how they can protect themselves and how they can change their environment at home as well to prevent falls,” he said. “Education is the key to lots of those things.”
Beverley said changes as simple as a nightlight in the hallway can help reduce potentially harmful falls.
Tendons and muscles in ankles, knees and hips also report back to the brain where the body is in space and related to other objects.
That’s a vital skill that decreases with age, but is learned, Beverley said.
“You can re-learn it, so we’ll be encouraging them to re-learn those kind of balance techniques,” he said.
Falls are the leading cause of injury to seniors and the sixth-leading cause of death in elderly Canadians, Beverley said.
As people age, they also become more susceptible to diminishing vision and tinnitus of the ear, which can both affect balance.
Approximately 30 per cent of Canadians aged 65 and older fall at least once a year.
Falls also account for about 95 per cent of hip fractures in the elderly, and hip fractures lead to death in approximately 20 per cent of all cases, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada’s 2014 report Seniors’ Falls in Canada.
Given their prevalence, costliness, comorbidity rates and the IHA’s move toward prevention, Beverley said the timing was right to try this type of program out.
He said preventing just one person from falling and breaking a hip could save the health-care system money and, more importantly, perhaps even a life.
“Prevention is always the way to go,” he said. “It’s so much easier to try to prevent a hip fracture than try to fix it once it’s here. The comorbidities with the elderly are horrible. The time is right.”
For more information, contact Beverley at the hospital’s physiotherapy department by calling 250-378-3227.
The free program begins Wednesday, March 18 at 10 a.m.
