Analysis Of A Quantitative Research Article Essay

Falls are one of the major patient safety problems that every facility encounter on a day to day basis. An aging patient population, combined with multiple diagnosis and medications are prime contributing factors for patient fall. Other contributing factors are shortage of nursing and auxiliary staff, ineffective work environment and shortage of appropriate equipment. According to the Joint Commission around 30-50 percent of the falls happening in the hospitals have resulted in injury to the patients. Since Joint Commission started keeping records of fall from 1995 to 2012, it has been reported that there were 659 fall related death or permanent disability, which were voluntarily reported as a

Patient falls in hospitals are a critical problem and are used as a standard metric of nursing care quality. According to the Joint Commission, thousands of patients fall in hospitals each year. Approximately 30-50% of falls result in injuries and prolonged hospital stays. Any patient in a hospital is at risk for falling and certain measures should be in place to prevent this. Preventing falls and injuries are not only important for the patient, but also for their families, the hospital, health care team, and insurance companies. It is estimated the average cost of a hospital admission due to a fall is $20,000 and by 2030, an estimated $54 billion will be spent on health care costs due to falls. The purpose of this paper is to explore the risk factors of falls in hospitals and interventions used to combat this problem.

This work has significance because staff and patient education can help prevent falls. Specific interventions decrease falls. Nurses have a responsibility to their patients and their facility to be competent and confident in their abilities to do all that they can to prevent falls. Facilities have the responsibility to provide the tools and the training that is required to carry out fall prevention

Nurses help to ensure patient safety, which includes preventing falls and fall-related injuries (Quigley, Neily, Watson, Wright, & Strobel, 2017). The general population is at risk for falls and fall-related injuries, more specifically the elderly, 65 and over (Quigley, Neily, Watson, Wright, & Strobel, 2017). Patient falls are one of the top events for hospitals and long-term care facilities due to loss of physical function or cognition (Quigley, Neily, Watson, Wright, & Strobel, 2017). Fall-related injuries are a serious health issue for the elderly population (Quigley, Neily, Watson, Wright, & Strobel, 2017). Nurses make a major contribution to patient safety by assessing fall risk and designing patient-specific fall prevention

In this paper I will analyze two articles, one is quantitative and the other is qualitative. I will describe the quantitative methods used including the research question addressed, the hypothesis, and variables. I will identify the population and sample. I will discuss the reliability and validity of the instruments used. I will then discuss the design of the article and how the findings were analyzed. For the qualitative article, I will identify the design of the article, the methods used and the strategies used for analyzing the data. Lastly, I will look at the implications for practice in the qualitative article, discuss other journals that might be interested in publishing the article and discuss how this article might

Before exploring the nurse’s role in fall prevention, one must first understand the risk factors for falls, the consequences of patient falls, and the organizations that influence how hospitals and long-term care facilities report falls. Although falls can occur to anyone at any time, a few factors increase the

Brittany Nix- This writer believes a key point or concern for health care professionals is how to keep the middle age group safe while maintaining privacy and independence. In comparing the first research to the current, data findings revealed the incidence of falls in middle-aged inpatients were similar to older inpatients. Far too often this writer feels the nursing profession stereotypes the older population while overlooking the risk in middle aged adults. This writer believes this research challenges nursing professionals to implement individualized fall prevention for patients, regardless of

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2016) informs us that “health care providers play a major role in fall prevention.” The care of our elders is entrust to all employees, every team member is value and fall prevention is not a concern of only the nursing staff. Therefore, as we embarked on this quality improvement endeavor our entire interdisciplinary team (IDT) met and brainstormed to develop a preventative plan to ensure safety. The fall policy was revised from the standard event reporting guidelines to to a more detailed and specific protocol. This protocol was in addition to the normal assessment, vital signs, mandate paperwork, and the procedures of notify the physician and the responsible party. The new ground rules laid out step by step guidelines. All staff members was informed about our concern with the increase rate of falls, the goal to reduce this number and the role they play in achieving this goal. “Every health care provider should be proactive in evaluating he risk of falls in their elderly patients” (Schimke & Schimke, 2014, p. 228). Therefore, a rallying of the troops is always necessary to assure we are all on board and moving in the same direction. Also, meetings of this nature reduces resistance from the direct caregivers. As well as, provides supports to the supervisors as they enforce and oversee the changes in our procedures. According to Osuji et al,

The following research question was addressed: What is the effect of falls in the older adults while hospitalized? CINAHL Complete and Google scholar databases were used to search for relevant quantitative research articles. CINAHL Complete was searched using words like “falls in older adults while inpatient”, “impact of falls in older adults while hospitalized”, falls in older adults”, “and falls in the hospital amongst older adults“, ” fall impact in older adults while hospitalized”. Google scholar databases was searched using keywords such as “impact of falls in hospitalized older adults”, “Fall in the older adults during hospitalization”, “effects of fall on older adults while hospitalized”. Quantitative research article published in English, where any author is a nurse, and adult subjects were analyzed; dates of publications for all articles were limited to the years between 2011–2016. The University of Texas at Arlington’s library site titled finding quantitative and qualitative research was used to evaluate the qualities of the research article to ensure quantitative articles were utilized. Research articles that were utilized were those that involve interventions focused on effects of falls in the older adults population while hospitalized. Multifactorial fall prevention programs, environmental, educational

Current nursing practices are based on strict standards and requirements issued by The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMC) and The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). The CMS requires facilities to provide a safe environment for care and failure to do so risks losing Medicare Medicaid funding. In fact, facilities no longer receive payments for treating injuries caused by in-hospital falls. The JCAHO National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) requires nursing home to reduce the risk of patient harm resulting from falls and to implement a falls-reduction program. The NPSG has been upgraded to a standard that requires facilities to assess and manage the patient’s risks for falls and implement interventions to reduce falls based on this assessment. The current nursing practice for fall interventions begins with assessment. Patients are assessed and reassessed to identify and address any risks factors including underlying medical or medication conditions. Risk Assessment Tools for predicting falls score each category identified as a potential risk. For example, categories include Medication, Activity/Mobility, Elimination, Previous Falls, Length of Stay, Mental Status, and Age all can influence the

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has identified eight adverse conditions, and inpatient injurious falls continues to be the most common adverse condition (as cited in Tzeng, Hu & Yin, 2016). The inpatient falls in the “US hospitals range from 3.3 to 11.5 falls per 1,000 patient days” (as cited in Bouldin et al, 2013, p.13). Roughly 25% of patients are injured when they fall (Bouldin et al, 2013). Since 2005, the USA’s National Patient Safety Goal listed fall prevention as a goal (Bennett, Ockerby, Stinson, Willcocks, & Chalmers, 2014). Since 2008, hospitals no longer receive payments from CMS for health care cost connected to inpatient falls (Bouldin et al, 2013). CMS views inpatient injurious falls as injuries that should never occur (Bouldin et al., 2013). There is no doubt that quality improvement must continue to address inpatient injurious falls. Preventing falls and implementing interventions to lower the rates of falls is a major concern for hospitals and must be included in any quality improvement measure.

Elimination of patient falls is not an easy task otherwise they would have been eliminated by now. Patient falls unfortunately continue to be a challenge and occur within the hospital and nursing home settings at alarming and sometimes deadly rates. The Center for Disease Control estimates that 1,800 older adults living in nursing homes die each year from fall-related injuries. Survivors frequently sustain injuries resulting in permanent disability and reduced quality of life. Annually, a typical nursing home with 100 beds reports 100 to 200 falls and many falls go unreported (CDC, 2015). Falls occur more often in nursing homes because patients are generally weaker, have more chronic illnesses, have difficulty ambulating, memory issues,

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine if registered nurses are utilizing evidence-based practice fall-preventative strategies, such as modification of patient-specific risk factors and implementation of a proper physical training program, to reduce and prevent falls and injuries in the elderly population.

A fall can make wide spread consequences on the health service or can be affected seriously by the increased health care utilization. Among the fallers approximately 30% of falls result in physical injury leading to extensive hospitalization with significant hospital expenses (Tzeng & Yin 2010). Preventive care phases can support health services to regulate the spare expenditure to a greater extend. A fall in hospital consequently affects the nursing staff, which lead to impaired job satisfaction, additional work load and startling time consume. As the front line of care, nurses can prevent falls and reduce fall injury rates in acute care unit with available resources (Dykes et al. 2013). This literature review aims to assess the efficiency of planned interventions to reduce the incidence of falls in acute medical units. The discussions of the main findings of the review as well as the recommendations for further research are revealed to conclude this study.

If patient safety is the most important issue in Health Care facilities then how come hospital inpatient falls continue to be the most reported of all accidental falls (Tzeng & Yin, 2009)? Throughout the years, hospitals continue to make changes to decrease the risk of accidents and increase the quality of patient safety. With research studies and improvements made, patient falls still hold the largest portion of reported incidents in hospitals (Tzeng, & Yin, 2008). According to Tzeng & Yin (2008), “fall prevention programs apparently do not effectively reduce inpatient fall rates because of human factors and ergonomics in a hospital environment (p.179, para. 2). The two studies reviewed in this paper were performed with the hopes of