Fall Risk Assessment & Screening Tool (Frast) - Missoula County: Fill & Download for Free

Amusingly enough, I’ve had this exact conversation with two experts, one an epidemiologist who worked on SARS, H1N1 and now COVID-19, and the other a pandemic modeling PhD. Both are working with clients across North America on risk assessment for return to work scenarios.Yeah, I’m a nerd. Also, a nerd who is engaged in a SaaS startup for statistically valid, repeatable, risk assessment of office, academic and other spaces for transmission events. Ingest floor plan. Assign agents. Simulate business-as-usual behaviors. Observe intersection of physical space with simulations. Identify risk points and increase of risk with increasing occupancy.And the answer is?If they sneeze or cough as they near you, pretty high. If you shake their hands, kiss their cheeks or otherwise be Italian with them, pretty high. Otherwise, droplets fall out of the air pretty quickly.It’s more people you are beside constantly and things you touch. The guy at the next desk, the doorknobs, the vending machines and the washrooms.But try to avoid it nonetheless. And wear a mask. Mostly because you might be the infected one and it prevents other people from being sprayed with your droplets. Yeah, I know, but trust me, no spraying without consent.

I am not a medical malpractice lawyer, but I worked at a firm that handled medical malpractice cases. The stories I heard were awful. I cannot go into great detail, because when cases settle there are pretty much always confidentiality agreements. However, I can tell you broadly some of the things I have seen.Failure to properly identify and treat infection leading to loss of hands, a portion of arms, feet, a portion of legs.Failure to treat someone because no one spoke Spanish and they did not provide their phone translation service. Left a person having a heart attack on a gurney in the hallway to die. Took hours of his wife begging for help and no one responding.Elderly people with fall risk falling because of a failure to assess them properly, put up bed railings, etc. Numerous cases of people falling and dying.Stroke leading to brain injury, leading to the destruction of a person’s life. A test showed that the person had issues with the dose of blood thinner. Office left a voice mail to call back after the weekend instead of getting the person to the hospital for treatment. Wouldn’t have had a stroke if they had followed basic medical procedures in the case.Birth injuries due to failure to properly monitor, leading to life long problems for the baby.Death of fetus because the doctor failed to identify the location of the uterus properly. Inserted something into the uterus during a procedure on a different part of the body. Caused miscarriage.Don’t even get me started on the nursing home abuse cases.

I’ve lived here for almost 20 years, and have been married to an American man for 7 years. We watch a lot of British TV programmes through Britbox and Acorn TV, and not a day goes by when he doesn’t get confused by something that is said by me, or on a TV programme. I have a whole list of anecdotes, but here are just a few:I had been in the USA for just a few months when I received my first telephone call from the charity store ARC. The conversation went like this:ARC “Hello, this is Jane from ARC, we will be in your area on Wednesday, do you have anything for collection?”Me: “Sorry, I don’t know who ARC is, what is it exactly that you collect?”ARC: “This is Jane…from ARC…we will be collecting in your area on Wednesday”Me: “I’m sorry, I still don’t know what or who ARC is and what you are looking for”ARC: (Very slowly and after a long pause) “Do…You…Speak…English…?”Me: “Ummmm…I AM English…”ARC: Long pause while this information sinks in, then the lady just dissolves into giggles “I’m so sorry, I didn’t recognise your accent!”.The funny thing was, that as soon as she knew I was, in fact, speaking English, we were able to have a lovely conversation with no further problems.2. I worked as an RN in a hospital for several years, and one of my patients said that she was having difficulty breathing and might need a nebuliser treatment… Me: “Of course, I’ll give respiratory care a call and they will be up to see you shortly” Patient “Honey, I don’t think I need a Priest just yet!”, That’s when I learned that my English pronunciation of ‘Res-pi-rah-tory’ was very different to the American ‘Res-pah-turry’ and she had thought I was saying ‘Spiritual Care’3. In all my years nursing in the US, we have to ask every patient on admission if they have ever had a fall as part of a fall risk assessment. I always had to pronounce ‘Fall’ with an American drawl ‘Faaahl’, because not a single one of my patients could ever understand the British pronunciation ‘Forl’. It sounded very strange with that one Americanised word coming in the middle of an otherwise English sentence.4. As a nurse, I often dealt with detoxing alcoholic patients, and one particular patient was being extremely noisy and aggressive one night shift. He had been put into restraints for his own safety and had been screaming out his anger with a constant barrage of offensive swear words for about the past 4 hours, and other patients were complaining about the noise. I was charge nurse that night, and had had enough…so I marched into his room, put my hands on my hips and exclaimed in my best Mary Poppins accent “For goodness’ sake, you need to stop all this shouting immediately! You are going to wake the babies up, and then we’ll all be in trouble!” He stopped, looked astonished, then said in a whisper “I’m sorry, I forgot about the babies!” And we didn’t hear a peep out of him for the rest of the night. From that night on, my nickname at work was Mary Poppins.5. Just a couple of years ago, we were visiting my husband’s family in Minnesota, just chatting to my father-in-law, when he came out with “So when did you learn to speak English?” Both my husband and I were so astounded that we just stood there with our mouths open for a minute before my husband said “Well, since she was about 6 months old…” My father-in-law is in his 90s, bless him!6. I just get used to having to repeat almost every food order in both restaurants and drive-through lines, because as soon as I say the first word, the server just gets a glazed look of wonder at my accent and then forgets to listen to the words instead of just the accent (how my husband describes it). Basically I’ve just got used to ‘mystery meals’ at drive-throughs especially now!