To explore lower-limb prosthesis users’ experiences with injurious falls, a team of researchers conducted semistructured interviews with 24 people and found that the consequences of falls extended beyond bodily damage. The respondents experienced adverse psychological outcomes and damage to the prosthesis, indicated that treatment from a physician was not required for a fall to be considered injurious, and the falls influenced the activities they engaged in, strategies they adopted to perform them, and how frequently they participated in them.
The researchers concluded that when describing injurious falls, lower-limb prosthesis users reported a broader range of experiences than the literature suggests, and that the findings indicated that traditional approaches to classifying injurious falls may need to be reconsidered.
The study’s authors proposed the term “falls of consequence” to capture the spectrum of adverse, meaningful fall-related outcomes, which can be further categorized into physical, functional, and psychological outcomes, and that improved documentation of consequential falls may enable more nuanced and meaningful evaluations of fall prevention interventions.
The study, “More than bodily damage: a qualitative exploration of lower limb prosthesis users’ experiences with injurious falls,” was published in Disability and Rehabilitation.
