Fall And Fall Related Injury

During hospitalizations, falls are amongst the highest preventable consistent adverse events. Preventing such undesirable events, enhances patient overall experience, as well as increased trust in the health care professional team (Fragata, 2011). The importance of fall prevention lies with the many serious unfavorable health outcomes it can pose on the patient. Falls have the potential increase length of hospital stay, limit mobility, independence, but can ultimately lead to health deterioration, including death. Worldwide, falls are the second leading cause of accidental death. In addition to the life-threatening health and safety risks falls have to the patient, it also as a financial impact,

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.

Problem: Patient falls have long been a common and serious problem in hospitals across the nation, causing

Healthcare organizations rely on incident reports for counting the frequency of falls and collecting fall-related data (Quigley, Neily, Watson, Wright, & Strobel, 2017). When a fall occurs in a healthcare organization, an incident report is completed to record the occurrence and circumstances surrounding a fall (Quigley, Neily, Watson, Wright, & Strobel, 2017). The definition of a fall is a loss of upright position (Quigley, Neily, Watson, Wright, & Strobel, 2017). A sudden, uncontrolled, unintentional, non-purposeful, downward displacement of the body to the floor, ground, or on an object (Quigley, Neily, Watson, Wright, & Strobel, 2017). When a fall occurs in a healthcare organization, an incident report is completed to record the occurrence and circumstances surrounding a fall (Quigley, Neily, Watson, Wright, & Strobel, 2017). The data might include time of day, location, activity, vital signs, and incontinence (Quigley, Neily, Watson, Wright, & Strobel, 2017). From the analysis of the data, one can determine the type of fall, such as accidental, anticipated physiological, and unanticipated physiological fall (Quigley, Neily, Watson, Wright, & Strobel, 2017). Along with the severity of the injury, minor, moderate, major, or severe, as well as to identify overall patterns and trends surrounding fall occurrence (Quigley,

Each year, one out of three elderly people fall (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2015). The CDC (2015) also reports that once an individual has fallen, the chance that they will fall again doubles. Falls also contribute to an increase in direct medical costs. The CDC (2015) states, “Direct medical costs for fall injuries are thirty-four billion dollars annually. Hospital costs account for two-thirds of the total.” The amount of elderly people who fall each year along with the economic costs that result from falls indicates that preventing patient falls remains an important goal for healthcare workers including nurses. Nurses can use the nursing process—assessment, diagnosis, planning, intervention, and evaluation—to prevent patient falls and meet the fall prevention standards set by various regulating bodies.

Minor (2009) explains the Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center (MH-TMC) fall reduction committee reviewed the historical data related to fall within their facility and compared their data with the national data. Therefore, indicators used were patient fall rates, also the outcome indicators used were patient fall rates. Thereby, reviewed were the current data, recommendations, and current practice. Also, the utilization of the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) was completed for the external benchmarks. Also, completion of the national comparison of patient falls in other facilities. Also, internal benchmarks were utilized within the organization for the comparison different population risks, patient acuity levels,

According to the reports published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Injury Centre (2007), falls are the third most common cause of unintentional injury death across all age groups and the first leading cause among people 65 years and older. A hospital can be a dangerous and erratic place for inpatients because of its unfamiliar

Statistical analysis showed that there is a high correlation between patient falls and the factors of nurse staffing that were addressed in this study. This shows that nurse staffing is significant in preventing patient falls and safety concerns in the hospital. The findings in data collected reinforce previous findings that greater staffing leads to fewer patient falls in the hospital. There were several correlations between the data collected and patient falls.

Patient falls is one of the commonest events within the healthcare facilities that affect the safety of the patients. Preventing falls among patients requires various methods. Recognition, evaluation, and preventing of patient falls are great challenges for healthcare workers in providing a safe environment in any healthcare setting. Hospitals have come together to understand the contributing factors of falls, and to decrease their occurrence and resulting injuries or death. Risk of falls among patients is considered as a safety indicator in healthcare institutions due to this. Falls and related injuries have consistently been associated with the quality of nursing care and are included as a nursing-quality indicator

Falls in an acute care setting lead the list of injury related deaths and deaths in the elderly. “A fall is defined as any event which patients are found on the floor (observed or unobserved) or an unplanned lowering of the patient to the floor by staff or visitors” (Kalisch, Tschannen, and Lee, 2012, p. 6). Medicare and Medicaid changes in 2008 list falls as one of the 10 hospital acquired conditions for which hospitals will no longer be reimbursed because falls are considered preventable conditions. Joint Commission accredited hospitals are required to assess for falls risk and implement falls prevention measures.

Problem Significance Fall is a nursing sensitive issue that require more attention from all healthcare professionals. As patients’ safety is one of many responsibilities of nurses, it is crucial for nurses to address issue related to fall injuries. The goal of nursing practice is to promote health and to alleviate pain and

In an article written by Trepanier and Hilsenbeck (2014) discuss findings within their research as representing falls to be the leading cause of injuries in hospitals, along with considered being among the most expensive adverse event in patients to

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.

My literature search began early, and continued on during the entire time of the course. As part of the Introduction, the class was asked to discuss a clinical situation related to bedside care that needed to be addressed by an independent nursing function. As a patient safety analyst, I have been concerned by the number of reported incidents on patients’ fall. Thus, I did not have any second thought in choosing the topic on patients’ fall as my area of inquiry for the Evidence-Based Practice course. My literature search strategy was guided by the weekly topics for the discussion posts. Although, the principal topic was on patients’ falls, the articles I reviewed ranged from risk assessment to fall prevention interventions.

Every year, 1 in 3 adults over the age of 65 years will fall at least once. According to Williams, Szekendi & Thomas (2013), “A fall is defined by the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators as an unplanned descent to the floor or extension of the floor with or without injury to the patient” (p. 19). Falls are the leading cause of death or reason for an emergency room visit for elderly. Research has shown that physicians recognize the prevalence, and can identify risks of falls, yet they are not regularly administering some form of fall risk assessment to their patients (Smith et al., 2015). So where is improvement needed? What is being done to reduce the incidents of falls within the healthcare facility? With the rising medical costs associated with falls and the injury it is posing to the patients, the safety of patients and prevention of falls has become a leading research target. Throughout this paper the three more common causations to falls will be addressed, along with the three top preventions and interventions the health care facilities are focusing on in order to decrease the rising number of falls.