ACHA publication: Ambulance responses to older adults who have fallen: a systematic review

This paper, written by PhD student and paramedic Imogen Gunson with supervision from ACHA Professor Adam Gordon, describes a systematic literature review focussed on how ambulance services respond to older adults who have fallen.  It includes outputs from nine studies. 

The review showed that where specific falls guidelines and policies were implemented by ambulance services, then patients tended to have better outcomes, in terms of being less likely to be admitted to hospital and being more likely to access community-based alternative care pathways.  It did find, however, that implementations of these pathways was limited and uneven.  Competing priorities for paramedics were an important issue.

The outputs of this review will inform subsequent parts of Imogen’s PhD studies, looking at how outcomes for older people who fall can be changed by ambulance teams working differently.  We’ll report back on future publications from this work as they become available.  You can find the article in full here.