Background: Falls in older adults are a major public health concern (Peeters et al, 2019); they are an important cause of injuries and impact on social participation, fear of falling again and health service utilisation. Falls in older adults (> 65 years) remain the most commonly reported incident with the HSE and HSE funded services. According to The Irish Centre for Social Gerontology (2007) the estimated costs for fall-related injuries in older people will increase from €1077m by 2020 to approximately €1587m in 2030. To this end, the National Quality Improvement team in partnership with key stakeholders are leading out of a series of QI collaborations with a focus to reduce avoidable falls using a suite of evidence based interventions including falls prevention community exercise programmes .
Aims: The aim of this research is to undertake a qualitative evaluation of individuals who have participated in one of these physiotherapy led falls prevention community exercise programmes or Falls Management Exercise (FaME) programmes in the Limerick region to determine their satisfaction or otherwise with the classes, including but not limited to their opinions on the benefits, negatives, challenges of the classes, impact on behavior/attitude to physical activity. This will be conducted via a semi-structured 1:1 interviews +/or focus groups with participants of these classes in the Limerick/Mid-West region, once they have completed the programme.
Hypothesis: it is hypothesized that participants of the classes will have varying views on levels of satisfaction and barriers faced to implementation of exercise and education provided during the programme, It is also hypothesized that feedback garnered from the qualitative investigation will inform future development and improvements of the community exercise classes being delivered for continued health services improvement. The results will also form the basis of a journal article which will be submitted for publication.