Encouraging exercise in older adults: advice for nurses

The importance of exercise for mental and physical health and wellbeing is well documented. Implementing this in practice, however, can be a struggle for many, especially older adults, who may not be well informed about how to do so safely. There are many reasons why older adults avoid exercise, such as cognitive decline and general frailty; a lack of knowledge as to what exercise is best and how to exercise safely while minimising falls risk; fear of falls among those who live alone; and depression and other mental illness, which may affect the person's motivation to get up and moving.

Nurses and other healthcare staff can play a key role in encouraging and motivating older adults to exercise, if they know what advice to give, what approach to adopt to get the best outcomes and what interventions to encourage.

Booth et al (2019) systematically reviewed the literature on the use of motivation as a mechanism underpinning exercise-based falls prevention programmes for older adults with cognitive impairment and looked at how and why interventions reduced falls. Rather than use the traditional method for evaluating data in a systematic review, which focuses on outcomes, they used the relatively new realist approach. In this method, inclusion criteria are more flexible and information from a range of sources is used to develop a ‘programme theory’.