Older Fallers Admitted to an Acute Hospital Spend 49% of Their Day Not Engaged in Any Purposeful Activity: A Behavior Mapping Study

Falls are the most common injury-related reason older Australians (aged 65 years and older) are admitted to hospital. Once admitted, older adults often engage in low levels of physical activity.

The primary objective of this study was to provide a descriptive analysis of activity levels of older adults admitted to the hospital under the acute aged-care team due to sustaining a fall. Secondary objectives were to (a) examine activity levels based on the day of the week (weekday/weekend) and room occupancy type (alone/shared) and (b) describe the physiotherapy input received.

An observational, cross-sectional study that utilized behavior mapping. Along with basic demographics and physical ability, detailed activity data were collected, analyzed, and presented descriptively. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Mann-Whitney U test were used to compare activity levels by day of the week and room occupancy type, respectively.

Participants (n = 26) had a mean age of 85.2 (SD 7.1) years and 58% were female. Participants spent most of their time in the hospital alone (57%), sitting (65%) in their room/bed space (90%), not engaged in any purposeful activity (49%). The most common physiotherapy intervention observed regardless of ward location was mobility practice, with a greater range of physiotherapy interventions observed on the outlier wards.

Older adults that have fallen and are hospitalized spend the majority of their time as inpatients not engaged in purposeful activity and receive limited physiotherapy input. Future research needs to identify modifiable factors to help encourage purposeful activity in the acute aged-care setting.