Bed Railss: A Case Study

A patient who is admitted to a facility may be alert, oriented, and independent in ambulation. Add on intravenous (IV) tubing attached to a pole, a telemetry monitor, a foley catheter, and new medications for the patient. This patient now has fall risk factors. The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate change in preventing falls in the hospital setting.

Equipment; If you were in a care home for elderly people and they couldn’t use their legs or get up from sitting down you would have to use a hoist to help them up which is more time consuming, but it is against the law to drag lift them onto their

Many of these inpatient falls can be prevented when following the proper fall prevention measures. Not only does patient safety make preventing falls a priority but the financial impact these falls have on an institution make it a priority as well.

Capan, K., & Lynch, B. (2007). Reports from the field: patient safety. a hospital fall assessment and intervention project. Journal of Clinical Outcomes Management: JCOM, 14(3), 155-160.

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

This safety hazard can harm or put service users at risk as having objects like a stick or something sharp on the floor can cause individuals in a care home to trip over them, which could result in death or service users hurting themselves. It is important that items are in places they should be in, if not this could lead to service users falling and injuring themselves or death. This is mainly due to the fact that the elderly are more weaker and fragile. It is easier for them to injure and bruise themselves as there ’skin gets thin as we

In addition, high risk participants received education relating to falls which involved nurses instructing participants not to get out of bed without assistance, to press the call-bell for assistance and how to use the call-bell. As part of this study protocol, participants in the intervention group received usual care which include: fall risk assessment, placing the call-bell, TV remote control, eyeglasses, dentures, and hearing aids within the patient’s reach. Other interventions that have been used were bed and chair alarms, bed was in the lowest position at all time except when care was being provided and bed brakes were locked at all times. The patient’s elimination needs were scheduled every two hours, bedside commode was provided for frequent elimination needs, the patient was not left unattended while on bedside commode or in the bathroom. For a safe bathroom environment toilets was raised, toilet seats were secure, and handrails was strong enough to support patients, and patient was also instructed to pull the call light if feeling dizzy or in need of any assistance . Furthermore, the room temperature was

Anyone is at risk for a fall, however, falls are especially concerning in the older adult population.

An assisted fall is when a staff member witnesses a patient's fall and attempts to minimize the impact of descend. Many patient falls occurring during hospital encounters may cause little or no harm but some can result in serious and even possibly life-threatening consequences for many patients such as hip fractures and head trauma. Even when a fall does not lead to death, it can require prolonged hospitalization. Some could suffer disability, loss of function, and lose their independence or premature death. “Patient falls in hospitals are a common and often preventable adverse event. Nurses routinely conduct fall risk assessment on all patients, but communication of fall risk status and tailored interventions to prevent falls is variable at best.” (Hurley,

The use of restraints is seen in the Emergency Department(ED) on a regular bases and has been a new experience to myself as a student nurse. The College of Nurses of Ontario Restraints Practice Standard (2009) explains restraints may be used where patient are at risk to themselves or others, for treatment purposes and controlling behaviours. Restraints may be chemical, physical or environmental. Restraints have limited increase in patient safety and can increase the agitation, confusion and health risks present. In the emergency department majority of bed rails are kept in the up position regardless of the patients’ mental, physical or emotional state. A bed rail is considered an environmental restraint and therefore should be kept in the down

Once a person becomes a patient in a hospital, he or she is there to receive treatment for that current condition. Although, that might not be the outcome for all patients because falls are within the top 10 unanticipated events in nursing (Kim, Huges& Fields, 2018). This means any patient in the hospital could fall and acquire a new medical condition during his or her stay. Once a patient falls that patient is now at risk for new injuries, and could possibly just added to the length of stay at the hospital. There are multiple reasons leading to patient falls in a hospital, and ways to prevent them should always be included with nursing care. Since falls happen for various reasons, there are four different categories, which are accidental,

A bedbound patient is an adult who is confined to a bed due to a health condition, accident or disabilty which consequently prevents them from being able to carry out every day tasks which are considered to be normal without

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

So how can we work to prevent these falls? Capezuit, Bush, Lane, Rabinowitz & Secic (2010) concluded that most patients exit the bed in three distinct ways, this may influence how well the bed exit alarm function. “This variability in bed egress supports the need for supplemental measures to assist alarms in detecting when residents are attempting to exit their beds and provide safety alternatives for fall prevention” (Capezuit et al., 2010). “Bed-exit alarms function unreliably with low weight residents or among those who are restless” (Capexuit, Bush et. al 2010). Their study suggest that tailoring the alarm to how the patient exits the bed can help to reduce fall related injuries and the number of false alarms from bed alarms. For example, a dual sensor; which is a pressure sensitive bed alarm equipped with an infared beam detector, was

A platform bed has a different type of bed frame which is usually characterized by sitting low to the ground and have a solid base on which to put a mattress. This type of bed frame requires only a mattress without a spring mattress. Without the right support, a mattress slip of this type of frame.