Manju Panankavil is Home Manager at Tallington Lodge Care Home in Tallington near Stamford. Manju and her team are taking part in a 100 Day Falls Prevention Challenge, working with the Integrated Neighbourhood Working Team based at Stamford Hospital.
100 Day Challenges are about rapidly testing ideas to see what works and what doesn't work, with ideas evolving and new ideas emerging over the course of the challenge. In Lincolnshire, there are teams working on four specific areas: reducing frequent A&E attendance (Gainsborough), frailty & homelessness (Lincoln North), mental health & people living alone (Mablethorpe), and falls prevention (Stamford).
The team at Integrated Neighbourhood Working has been working with Stamford Lakeside GP Surgery and have developed a train-the-trainer curriculum on frailty. They have also been finding new ways of working and strengthening collaboration by taking a multidisciplinary approach. They are also looking at a new holistic assessment of people who have had a fall, to identify factors that could be rectified quickly such as eyesight issues, medications that affect balance, blood pressure problems on standing and environmental issues around the home.
My focus here at Tallington Lodge is to provide additional training and support for our staff to enable them to give the very best care to our residents. When I heard about this new initiative, I was very keen for Tallington Lodge Care home to be involved. As part of this initiative, I have learned that over 50% of people over 80 years old will have a fall and nearly ¼ of a million people over 65 have a fracture as a result of a fall. As carers we know first-hand that fall-prevention is key to keeping our residents well and healthy, educating our care teams on frailty will help greatly with this.
There are many conditions typical of ageing such as dementia, depression, incontinence and vertigo (known as geriatric syndromes) that contribute to frailty. Frailty is a geriatric syndrome that combines the effects of natural ageing with the outcomes of multiple long-term conditions and contributes to the risk of falling. We see residents with many of these conditions in our care home.
The Neighbourhood working team area leading a program of education for carers and have delivered ‘train-the-trainer’ training which I have attended. I will be sharing this with our care teams. We will also be holding information sessions for families of residents in our care home and local health care professionals so that they can learn more about frailty and understand more about fall prevention.
The team leading the 100 Day challenge will present what they feel is needed for people who fall in Lincolnshire to an executive team which includes representatives from the CCG, Adult Social Care, and Public Health. We hope that the recommendations will be implemented across the county and beyond and are proud to have played our part in this.
Manju joined Country Court Care in 2009 as a Senior Carer and worked her way to Deputy Manager and Manager at The Red House Nursing Home in Stamford, before becoming Home Manager at Tallington Lodge Care Home.
Join us for our Falls Prevention Coffee Morning at Tallington Lodge Care Home on Thursday 25th July at 10.30am. Our speaker will be Natalie Munslow, Lead for Integrated Neighbourhood Working. She will tell us more about frailty and the work she's been leading on Falls Prevention in the Stamford Area. The session is free to attend but please let us know you're planning to come by calling or emailing Rabea on 07834790400 or rabea.azad@countrycourtcare.com.
