What to do after a fall at home

Most falls at home are not dramatic. Someone catches a foot on a rug edge, sits down harder than they meant to, gets up, and tells nobody. That last part is the problem, because the fall that gets hidden is the one that repeats.

Here is what to do in the minutes, days and weeks after a fall. This is general information, not medical advice about your own situation.

The first few minutes

The instinct is to get straight up and prove nothing happened. Resist it.

Stay still for a minute. Breathe out. Then check, slowly, before moving anything: is there sharp pain anywhere, particularly in a hip, a wrist, a shoulder or the back? Was the head hit? Can both legs and both arms move normally?

Call Triple Zero (000) and do not attempt to get up if there is severe pain, if a leg will not take weight, if a hip or a leg looks turned or shortened, if there is any confusion or loss of consciousness, or if the person cannot be moved without real pain. An ambulance moving someone properly is much better than a family member doing it badly.

Getting up, if it is safe to

If nothing hurts badly and everything moves, do it in stages rather than in one heave.

Roll onto one side. Push up onto an elbow, then onto hands and knees. Crawl to a solid piece of furniture, a dining chair or the base of a sturdy lounge, not a wheeled chair or a coffee table. Put both hands on it, bring the stronger leg up so that foot is flat on the floor, then push up through that leg and the arms together. Sit down straight away and stay sitting for a few minutes.

If it cannot be done in two attempts, stop and get help. Someone who has been on the floor for a long time needs to be seen by a doctor regardless of how they feel.

Reasons to be seen even when nothing is broken

A fall with no injury is still information. Worth a same-day call to the GP: any knock to the head, any fall by someone on blood-thinning medication, pain that eases and then comes back over the next day or two, a fall that came with dizziness or a blackout, and any fall with no obvious cause at all.

That last one matters most. Tripping on a hose is an event. Falling for no reason you can name is a symptom, and it deserves a proper look.

The next 48 hours

Bruising and stiffness usually show up the day after, not on the day. Watch for pain that gets worse rather than better, new confusion or drowsiness, difficulty walking that was not there before, and reluctance to use an arm.

Watch for the quieter thing too. After a fall a lot of people stop doing what they used to do, and the loss of confidence takes more away than the fall did. Moving less makes the legs weaker, which makes the next fall likelier. If someone has gone quiet and stopped going out, that is worth naming out loud.

Finding out why it happened

This is the part that changes the outcome, and it is the part most often skipped.

Book a GP appointment and ask for a proper falls review. Medications are a common cause, particularly blood pressure tablets, sedatives and anything new in the last month. A Home Medicines Review with a pharmacist can sort that out. Ask about blood pressure sitting and standing, eyesight, feet and footwear, and whether a physiotherapist or exercise physiologist should be involved. Our guide on exercise physiology and preventing falls covers what that actually looks like at home.

An occupational therapist looks at the house rather than the person, and often finds the real cause on the first visit: a mat, a step with no contrast, a bathroom with nothing to hold. Our home safety checklist is a decent first pass you can do yourself this afternoon.

My Aged Care has more on assessments and what support is available at myagedcare.gov.au.

Tell the people who come to the house

Every fall goes on the record, including the ones with no injury and the ones the person is embarrassed about.

At Aldera it goes into One Story, the single record your whole Care Circle works from, so the worker who comes on Thursday knows what happened on Monday. Your Care Lead can then change what needs changing, whether that is the shower routine, the time of the visits, or getting an OT out.

A provider who only learns about falls at the six-month review is not going to prevent any of them.