Review and Ethical Analysis of Paper "Falls among elderly population"

Background: Falls are a common and often devastating problem among the elderly population, causing a tremendous amount of morbidity, mortality. Different intervention modalities that result in decrease in the number of falls have been studied, these include exercise, medication reduction, support services and home hazard modifications. Similarly, multiple intervention programs also showed promising results in fall reduction. Context: Ethical analysis of falls among elderly population especially in Day and colleagues research study. Method: Review and ethical analysis of the topic of falls among elderly population. The main paper reviewed in is "Randomised factorial trial of falls prevention among older people living in their own homes", by Day and colleagues Results: Exercise interventions showed significant effect on fall incidence (p < 0.05), cited as the most important fall reduction intervention. Home hazard and vision interventions showed no significant effect. Overall, a combination of all three interventions showed greatest effect by reducing falls by 14%. Conclusion : The elderly is becoming increasingly important. The elderly are more prone to falls and the resulting injuries can have serious implications on quality of life. Whilst the examples I provided illustrate that research into the subject is ongoing, one must appreciate that the full effects have yet to be seen. Future research needs to focus on replicating fall prevention studies like Day and colleagues in order to develop strong evidence for change and implementation of interventions into clinical practice.