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Exercise interventions influencing falls efficacy in community-dwelling older adults can focus beyond balance confidence.
Background and Objectives:
Falls efficacy helps older adults to have greater agency towards managing falls. Exercise interventions hold promise to bolster specific domains of falls efficacy, such as balance confidence, balance recovery confidence, safe landing confidence and fall recovery confidence. Understanding how various exercise interventions could be designed through various modes of self-efficacy influence is imperative. This review examines the designs of various exercise interventions influencing falls efficacy in community-dwelling older adults.
Methods:
Arksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework was used for this scoping review. Three databases, Pubmed, EBSCOhost and Web of Science, were used to search keywords such as ‘exercise’, ‘falls efficacy’, ‘confidence’, ‘balance recovery’, ‘safe landing, ‘post-fall recovery’ and ‘older adults’ between January 2013 and December 2022. Three reviewers independently screened the articles. Data were extracted and summarised based on a ‘descriptive-analytical’ method.
Results:
Fifty-five studies were included in the review, involving a sample population of 4866 older adults from 14 countries. Most of the interventions (97.4%) focused on balance confidence. Generic multicomponent exercise (n=9) and the Otago Exercise Programme (OEP) (n=8) are the most common. The Falls Management Exercise (FaME) is a community-based exercise programme focused on fall avoidance and management ability. Mastery of performance was largely orchestrated within indoor environments. Group classes provided vicarious learning. Verbal persuasion was predominantly given by physiotherapists or certified exercise instructors.
Conclusion:
Exercise interventions mainly focused on balance confidence. Further research on exercise interventions would be needed to provide evidence of their efficacy in addressing various self-efficacies to help older adults prevent and manage falls.
