Faldforebyggelse konstrueret som medicinsk overvågning og selvovervågning: Falls prevention constructed as medical surveillance and self-surveillance

This study explores understandings of falls and investigates how falls prevention is managed, administrated and practiced in a Danish falls prevention program. Methods: A discourse analysis inspired by Foucault is constructed. The material consists of a field study conducted at a falls clinic including participant observations, conversations and documents. Results and conclusion: Understandings of falls range from preventable and predictable accidents to natural and inevitable events. Falls prevention was managed, administrated and practiced through medical surveillance and self-surveillance, which produced and reproduced biomedical understandings of falls drawing on medical surveillance and health discourses. Older adults were constructed as pre-patients, passive/active falls patient and responsible self-caretakers. The study is intended to provide health professionals with a deeper understanding of the complexity of falls prevention in late life and to inspire to development of new falls prevention services.