Interprofessional Collaboration in Fall Prevention: Insights from a Qualitative Study

Isabel Baumann, Frank Wieber (), Thomas Volken, Peter Rüesch and Andrea Glässel
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Isabel Baumann: Institute of Public Health, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland
Frank Wieber: Institute of Public Health, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland
Thomas Volken: Institute of Public Health, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland
Peter Rüesch: Institute of Public Health, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland
Andrea Glässel: Institute of Public Health, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 17, 1-13

Abstract: (1) Background and objective: to explore the experiences of Swiss health care providers involved in a community fall prevention pilot project on barriers and facilitations in interprofessional cooperation between 2016 and 2017 in three regions of Switzerland. (2) Methods: semi-structured interviews with health care providers assessed their perspective on the evaluation of jointly developed tools for reporting fall risk, continuous training of the health care providers, sensitizing media campaigns, and others. (3) Results: One of the project’s strengths is the interprofessional continuous trainings. These trainings allowed the health care providers to extend their network of health care providers, which contributed to an improvement of fall prevention. Challenges of the project were that the standardization of the interprofessional collaboration required additional efforts. These efforts are time consuming and, for some categories of health care providers, not remunerated by the Swiss health care system. (4) Conclusions: On a micro and meso level, the results of the present study indicate that the involved health care providers strongly support interprofessional collaboration in fall prevention. However, time and financial constraints challenge the implementation. On a macro level, potential ways to strengthen interprofessional collaboration are a core element in fall prevention.

Keywords: fall prevention; interprofessional collaboration; qualitative research; focus groups; community health services; older adults; evaluation; physical therapy; occupational therapy; general practitioners (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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