HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS
A Collaborative Approach
All adults 65 years and older should be screened at least once a year to help identify and manage their fall risk factors. While family physicians and nurse practitioners play an essential role in ensuring that screenings, assessments and interventions occurs based on best available evidence for clinical practice, it's important to remember that a collaborative approach can facilitate the delivery of comprehensive individualized care - especially for older patients with complex needs.
This approach involves a process in which a team of healthcare professionals and other stakeholders with complementary backgrounds work together to share their expertise, knowledge, and skills toward a common goal along with a fully informed and engaged patient.
To learn about available programs aimed at supporting a collaborative approach for your clinical practice, consult the sections below.
Leadership in Injury Prevention
Most stakeholders understand that enhanced fall prevention efforts continue to be needed especially when faced with increased healthcare demands due to an aging population. To help address this increasing demand, Trauma NB is committed to provide provincial expertise and leadership in injury prevention.
This is ensured through a collaborative process for the development and promotion of fall prevention resources in both official languages in addition to completing comprehensive analyses of fall-related data to better understand the scope of this issue. For example, a data chart that quantifies the estimated increase in provincial hospitalization numbers due to fall-related injuries in older adults over the next two decades was created in 2020.
For a copy, click on the Estimate of Fall-related Injury Hospitalizations in Older Adults chart.
Medication Review
Older adults covered under the NB Prescription Drug Program who take three or more prescriptions for chronic conditions are eligible to have a publicly-funded, annual medication review with their pharmacist as part of the NB PharmaCheck program.
Please consult the NB PharmaCheck Guidance Document or click on the provided link for more information.
Electronic Consult
To support a more collaborative practice, many technological solutions have been
proposed and implemented over the past years. eConsult is an innovative program which assists with electronic communication between a family physician and a specialist.
An electronic consult occurs when a family physician sends a patient specific, non-urgent request for advice to a specialist on a secure web-based platform (eHealthNB). They can obtain support for the assessment and management of fall risks in older patients from available specialties such as Geriatric Medicine, Neurology and Chronic Pain Management.
For more information, please click on the eConsult Brochure image.
New Brunswick Extra-Mural Program
As you may already know, the New Brunswick Extra-Mural Program (EMP) provides comprehensive and coordinated care throughout the province. This is ensured by an interdisciplinary team which includes professionals from a variety of health care fields such as registered nurses, registered dietitians, physiotherapists and social workers.
Services EMP provides include helping patients return to their home early from hospitalization by providing short-term care at home and assisting people suffering from chronic health problems with professional chronic care services to allow them to stay at home and avoid admission to a health care facility due to a possible fall-related injury.
To request a referral for available services, please click on the provided link for a copy of the EMP Referral Request Form and follow the instructions to submit.
Resources
- Estimate of Fall-related Hospitalizations in Older Adults
- Developed by Trauma NB
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Developed by NB Pharmacists' Association and NB Department of Health
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NB PharmaCheck Guidance Document
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Developed by NB Department of Health
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Developed by Trauma NB and NB Department of Health
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New Brunswick Extra-Mural Program
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Managed by Medavie Health Services
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Developed by Medavie Health Services
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