Nurse Next Door Looks to Provide Safer Living for Local Seniors During Fall Prevention Week 2007
Offers free home safety assessments to local seniors November 26 - 30

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 1, 2007 (Vancouver, BC) - The majority of accidental deaths among seniors aged 75 and older are due to falls. With this knowledge, Nurse Next Door is giving back to the community it serves through its annual Fall Prevention Week, offering free home safety inspections for local seniors.

Last year’s Fall Prevention Program saw Nurse Next Door send caregivers and nurses into hundreds of homes to conduct free safety assessments for seniors. “We were able to make the lives of hundreds of seniors safer last year by checking their homes for typical fall hazards,” said Kristan Ash, VP of Franchise Development for Nurse Next Door. “Our goal this year is to offer this free program to seniors in all of our locations and help ensure that none of these senior citizens end up in the hospital this winter due to a preventable fall.”

The statistics regarding senior falls are alarming:
Percentages

• 33% of older adults living at home fall each year
• 85% of injury-related hospital admissions in seniors are the result of falls
• 90% of hip fractures are the result of a fall
• 20% of seniors who suffer a hip fracture from a fall die within one year

Costs

• $728 million in BC for direct and indirect costs spent on falls (compared to $428 million on car crashes)
• $3 billion in direct costs to the healthcare system in Canada (diabetes is $1 billion)

The most striking fact is that the majority of seniors falls are actually preventable. "The most common cause is area or scatter rugs," said Ash. "Our home safety assessment allows us to show seniors how to make their homes safer and we can do this at no cost to them."

Other common causes for falls include:

• Improper footwear
• Lack of grab bars or hand rails
• Poor lighting
• Pet toys, dishes, and other animal related items
• Lack of rubber mats in bath tubs

About Nurse Next Door

Nurse Next Door, resulting from the personal experiences of co-founders Ken Sim and John DeHart, is a senior care provider dedicated to delivering responsive, caring and high quality senior care services. The company is the largest senior care provider in Western Canada and is currently expanding across North America through qualified franchise partners.

For more information visit www.nursenextdoor.ca or contact:
Arif Abdulla
Communications & PR Manager
Nurse Next Door
Office: 604.228.4357
Mobile: 778.838.1304
Email: arif.abdulla@nursenextdoor.ca

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