Terry Streetman (Host): Welcome back to Well Within Reach. I'm Terry Streetman, Riverside Marketing and Communications Representative. We're here today with Spencer Olson, an outpatient physical therapy assistant, who's here to discuss falls in the wintertime, how to prevent them, and what to do if they happen. Thanks for joining us, Spencer.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Thanks for having me, Terry.

Terry Streetman (Host): Glad to have you here. Before we get into our questions, we will take a quick break for a message about MyChart.

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Host: So, Spencer, this is your first time here as a guest, so could you please tell us a little bit about yourself and your role here at Riverside?

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Yeah. So, I've been here at Riverside for about seven years. For the first two and a half to three, I started as a transporter on the inpatient side. Now I'm a Physical Therapist Assistant, both in the inpatient and outpatient, so in and out of the hospital. So, I see everybody at every level of care.

Host: Okay. All right. Well, thank you for the correction there. Not just outpatient.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: That's okay.

Host: And it's great. I appreciate that Riverside has both options because then we've got that continuum of care. So on the subject of slips and falls in the wintertime, what types of injuries do you all see, the types of recovery people need from slips and fall in the wintertime? I assume there's a kind of an uptick in that.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Yeah. So funny thing too. I mean, you see the typical bone breaks, all that kind of stuff. Some things that we see frequently are broken hips, broken backs, other things include FOOSH injuries, which is falling with an outstretched hand. So, there's multiple different types of injuries that we can see.

Recovery depends really on your age, your activity level before and how bad the fall was.

Host: Okay, so, are there things people can do, whether it's like exercises for strengthening different muscle groups or other proactive safety measures that people can take to improve their balance and help prevent these kind of falls?

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Yeah, the best thing that you really can do is maintain your balance throughout the year and keep working on it. Keep challenging yourself in a safe environment, of course. But, the more you can maintain, the safer you are throughout the year. That way you can catch yourself better if you do end up slipping either on a patch of ice or even if it's just wet ground, something that's a little more unstable.

Host: Okay. So yeah, kind of a don't have to get ready if you stay ready. Right. Kind of a vibe. Right. Okay. I've had that happen. You're walking along, you don't see the ice or whatever it is, and it can be tough if you're not prepared for that balance. Okay, before we do our next question, we're going to take a moment to talk about the importance of primary care.

Consistency is being able to count on someone to be there when you need them. At Riverside HealthCare, your primary care provider is dedicated to being in your corner, helping you and your family stay healthy and thrive. Find the right primary care provider for you at riversidehealthcare.org/primarycare. From annual screenings to well checks and everything in between, having a primary care provider that you can trust makes all the difference.

Okay, so we're back, and we'll talk a little bit more about falls in the winter. If someone does have a fall, what are some of the symptoms that would signal, like, this isn't just a minor bump or bruise, I might need to come seek medical attention?

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Sure. So, starting out, let's kind of walk through those steps of, all right, you just fell. Do you know exactly which direction you fell, and how quick was it? Did you feel yourself going down? Sometimes people go, I'm up, and then I wasn't. You want to take a second to really gather your thoughts, gather your senses, because you're going to be a little numb at first too. Your body will not process a fall.

So first thing to do is check yourself from head to toe mentally. Think, did I hit my head? Did I hit any other part of my body? And can I wiggle my toes? So going through the really basic but very important steps too, make sure you don't have any nerve damage or anything like that.

Am I bleeding? How am I feeling? If you take a second or at least a minute, I would say, to let the shock kind of come out of your body and slowly move, start to see if things are painful. If things are excruciatingly painful, people often go, yeah, I probably can't get up. So common sense does kind of tend to take over there.

But that's the first step is just take a minute. And if you have a cell phone on you, better to call somebody than to not if you're on the fence for that. But, if there's blood, definitely want to get checked out, and if you're feeling dizzy, faint, anything like that, or even the cause of the fall. If it's not like something slipping on the ice. If it's, you got dizzy, or you passed out.

Host: Okay.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Definitely want to get medical attention there.

Host: Yeah, so not just the ice as a risk, that's good to know. And I think giving people that advice of like, take a minute, because in the immediate aftermath, you've got the embarrassment, you've got the shock, you've got all of that.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Especially if it's in public.

Host: Yeah. Yeah. And Lord knows I've been through that.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Right.

Host: So we've talked about some of these injuries that might happen. What are some of the things that Riverside Physical Therapy and sort of Riverside as a whole can do for folks if they've experienced a fall and they suspect they have an injury?

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: So, there's a good amount to break down there, in and of itself. So, we can start from, let's say you fell and you didn't hurt anything. Okay, you're fine, but that scared you a little bit, you might not want to get hurt again. Understandably, because not everybody likes to fall.

Host: Uh huh.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: And not everybody recovers well from a fall either. So, what we can do is we can help with balance and getting you stronger to actually stay on your feet or catch yourself better even. We do falls training sometimes. So if people know that they're gonna fall frequently, whether that's just part of who they are, or if that's the environments they put themselves in, obviously the less falls the better.

But if we teach you how to fall safer, that's gonna be a little less risk for injury. But, obviously, that's not for everybody either. So we do teach a lot of, like, safety training and making sure you can reduce your risk for falls as much as you can as well.

Host: Wow, yeah, that fall training is not something I was familiar with.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Right. So, that's more so for specific people who really need that, who we know we can't stop them from falling. So, that's what we tend to fall back on. No pun intended. But, if it's more on the extreme side where you do, let's say, break a hip, because that is one of the more common things that happens with the fall, our orthopedic team is excellent. They are pretty well on the ball with that. They'll get you in surgery within that day or possibly the next day.

Host: Wow.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: If it requires surgical intervention. And then we often see you either same day or day after surgery. And we get you up, we get you moving, and that rehab process starts right then and there. And that is hugely important to keep going, to make sure that you keep recovering, and recover well, because the more you sit, and the less you use it. The more you lose.

Host: Sure. Well, that makes sense. And it's cool that there's that sort of continuum, that, coordinated care with PT and with orthopedics. And from what I understand, like we have the sort of the movement, the balance, the bone injuries, that kind of thing. If somebody does fall and hit their head, is there services, do we have concussion treatments or folks that can help with that?

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up too. At the atrium over here down the road in Bradley, we do offer concussion services. I'm not 100 percent sure if we offer concussion services outside of there yet, but that is something we're wanting to expand on.

Host: Awesome. Yeah. Cause that can be really disconcerting. I know, unfortunately, from personal experience.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: As do I.

Host: So it's, good to know what people can do there. Before we wrap up, is there anything else that you want to add for our listeners?

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Actually with regards to like the occurrence of falls in the winter. Typically, you start to see them either with busier times like the holidays or months coming out of winter. So, March is a big time for falls. November is a pretty decent one too and December just because of the holidays, but looking at some of the studies, it's coming out of that time where people think, okay, no more ice, I'm good.

Host: Sure. Okay.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: So, same thing as if you fall, you want to take a minute, take a beat, take your time to go throughout your paces that you go through your normal day and just make sure either your roads, your sidewalks, your steps are salted and you take slow, easy steps even when coming out of the winter months. So once you hit March, don't think, okay, I'm good. Still take your time. Be careful, especially if you haven't been active in the winter months.

Host: Okay.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: That's how you can really end up losing your balance and losing a lot of strength as well. Yeah. So, that can pose as much of a danger, the inactivity, as much as the ice.

Host: Okay, so that combination of, you don't use it, you lose it, and also that letting your guard down, because you're like, all right, it's spring, you're all excited.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: People sit in the house for two months and go, okay, I'm not going out because it's icy, I don't want to fall, and, you know, warm spell in March or even late February hits and they're like, all right, I'm gonna get out. It's a nice day. Down they go.

Host: Yeah, I wouldn't have thought of that. So thank you for that, that additional detail. So thank you again for joining us today, Spencer. We really appreciate the information. If our listeners would like to learn more about Riverside Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy, they can call 815-935-7514 or visit myRHC.net/rehabilitation. Thanks again for joining us.

Spencer Olson, PTA, CSRS: Thanks, Terry.

Host: Thanks for tuning in to Well Within Reach, presented by Riverside Healthcare. Please take a moment to rate and leave a review for Well Within Reach on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about Riverside, visit riversidehealthcare.org.