Physical environment and spatial accessibility: contributions to nursing care in the prevention of falls in elderly

• Author(s): Ribeiro,Edmar Geraldo ; Soares,Sônia Maria ; Azevedo,Raquel Souza ; Soares,Márcia Maria
• Date: 2014
• Origin: Oasisbr
• Subject(s): Spatial accessibility, elderly, geriatric nursing, physical environment, nursing care.
• Document Type: Journal article
• Language: English

Description

The increasing elderly population provides significant challenges to maintaining quality of life and health status. One of these challenges includes the dimension of the physical space and accessibility for the elderly in nursing care. The aim of this paper is to discuss through a narrative review of the literature, the implications of the physical environment and the design of spatial accessibility for the prevention of falls in older adults. A search was performed in the databases: Lilacs, Medline and Bireme. We identified 159 publications, selecting in the end 18 publications that met the inclusion criteria. Falls in the elderly are often related to the physical environment and spatial accessibility. Nurses should pay attention to this aspect, taking into account the notion of spatial accessibility in their home visits, becoming an agent capable of intervening in the environment to prevent falls in the elderly.