Teaching Fall Prevention to Physical Therapy Students With STEADI

Falls are a major burden for older adults. STEADI is CDC's initiative to help health care providers prevent them, built on three core steps: screen, assess and intervene. This CDC success story describes how one university brought it into the training of future physical therapists.

Into the classroom

David Taylor, PT, DPT, GCS, a clinical assistant professor and director of clinical education in Mercer University's Doctor of Physical Therapy program in Atlanta, saw early in his career how heavily falls weigh on older patients. When he learned about STEADI four years before this story was written, he saw it as a teaching tool.

He added STEADI to the program's course on geriatric patient management. Students take CDC's online STEADI training for providers on preventing falls in older adults and apply the STEADI algorithm in a project with the Shepherd Center, an Atlanta hospital specializing in spinal cord and brain injury rehabilitation. For three years, students carried out the project at the Shepherd Center's annual Fall Prevention Awareness Day.

Since STEADI entered the curriculum:

• 114 physical therapy students have been trained to use it;
• 76 have completed CDC's online STEADI module;
• many have shared it with the practices where they did clinical training or took jobs after graduating, in acute care and outpatient orthopedic settings.

Beyond the classroom

With a grant from the Mercer University Health Sciences Center, Taylor also organized a service-learning project on reducing fall risk, bringing together students and faculty in nursing, public health, physical therapy, pharmacy and physician assistant studies. Mixed groups discussed fall prevention and carried out community STEADI screenings with 27 volunteers. Because each group drew on several professions, it could carry out all three STEADI steps.

Taylor's view, as described by CDC, is that falls are a problem for everyone on a patient's health care team, and that STEADI gives professionals across disciplines a shared language, evidence-based tools for spotting fall risk, and strategies for reducing it. He hopes wider use will catch fall risk earlier, get more older adults into prevention programs and reduce falls.

CDC concludes that the experience of Taylor's colleagues and students shows STEADI's coordinated approach is useful for physical therapists, who are integral members of the health care team.

Sources

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, STEADI success story, "STEADI Incorporated Into Physical Therapy Curriculum." https://www.cdc.gov/steadi/success-stories/routine-care.html
• CDC, STEADI: https://www.cdc.gov/steadi/index.html; STEADI online training for providers: https://www.cdc.gov/steadi/hcp/training/index.html
• Photographs from Mercer University on CDC's page are not reproduced here, and Taylor's remarks are paraphrased.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.