Home Safety Evaluation and Fall Risk Assessments for Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Reducing the Risk for Falls

Course overview

This course highlights intrinsic and extrinsic fall risk factors in community-dwelling older adults who desire to age in place and the evidence-based assessment fall risk and home assessment tools that can be utilized to support the need for remediation and rehabilitation-based interventions and skilled therapy services. The course presents current literature to identify locations in the home where falls occur most frequently, the fall hazards in those locations, and recommendations to address environmental safety hazards. The course draws attention to the role of adaptive equipment, assistive devices, durable medical equipment, and adaptive strategies to address intrinsic and extrinsic fall risk factors to enable community-dwelling older adults to age in place safely.