One of the hallmarks of the education students receive at Nova Southeastern University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine (NSU-COM) and throughout the other NSU Health Professions Division programs is the much-lauded interdisciplinary aspect that offers them opportunities to interact and work side-by-side with their student peers from other health professions’ disciplines. Fortunately, that same interdisciplinary approach applies to patients who visit the university’s Interdisciplinary Fall Prevention Clinic, which is located in the NSU Sanford L. Ziff Health Care Center in Davie.
The clinic, which began as a pilot program in 2004, has proven to be a valuable community service resource that allows adults of all ages to receive a one-time comprehensive – and complimentary – health assessment from an accomplished team of NSU experts representing various health care disciplines such as audiology, geriatric medicine, occupational therapy, optometry, pharmacy, physical therapy, and psychology. In addition to being a free service to South Florida residents, the Fall Prevention Clinic serves as a vital educational tool for a diverse array of NSU students, who get to witness the patient/team-approach assessment process firsthand.In its current incarnation, the clinic sees about six patients per month, with each patient receiving well over two hours of assessment time during an individual session. Because the clinic is only open several afternoons a month, a copious amount of prescreening is done to provide patients with maximum benefit.
“The Fall Prevention Clinic is open to anybody, including people who haven’t had a fall yet but are perhaps showing some warning signs they might, as well as those who have fallen once and only had minor falls, or people who had a major fall and are still having residual balance issues and falls,” said Michelle Gagnon Blodgett, Psy.D., coordinator of geriatric clinical services for the Health Professions Division and clinical assistant professor in the NSU-COM Department of Geriatrics. “We screen potential patients on the phone ahead of time and collect some preliminary health information, such as medications being taken, which allows us to be fairly well-prepared during the actual in-person meeting.”
