Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Safety flooring is a promising strategy to prevent fall-related injuries. We explored the practicality of installing safety flooring in nursing homes by interviewing nursing home managers. During the interviews, we asked questions about fall and injury prevention approaches, with a focus on safety flooring. We recorded interviews and analyzed the interviews using standard methods for qualitative research. 18 managers from 16 nursing homes were interviewed. We identified three major themes about safety flooring: 1) organizational facilitators to adoption (e.g., potential for injury prevention, long-term care staff's openness to change); 2) organizational barriers to adoption (e.g., negative effects to long-term care staff, financial considerations - cost and lack of funding); and 3) general organizational considerations (e.g., uncertainties about clinical effectiveness, effects on long-term care staff, and flooring performance). This is the first study to examine perceptions of safety flooring among nursing home staff. Our findings provide new information about the barriers and enablers that decision-makers consider in determining to install safety flooring in nursing homes. The findings also suggest the need to inform nursing home managers around Canada about the currently available evidence on safety flooring.