Fall Prevalence: A Case Study

Falling is a crucial issue among the hospitals. Even the hospitals make all the efforts to prevent falls, falls still occur frequently and some repeatedly. According to Currie (2008), approximately 700000 to 1000000 individuals fall in the United States hospitals each year. A fall in a health care organization is considered a never-event by Medicare and Medicaid services(CMS) (Cox et al., 2015). As the result, health care facilities are not reimbursed for hospitalized falls which increase the economic burden of hospitals.

This article utilized some programs that are similar the field experience site. Therefore, one can use this article as a reference to modify and adjust the current fall prevent protocol to make an effective change to reduce falls in the hospital. Furthermore, the article also recommends education related to fall prevention that can be useful content in the transition program.

Quality management departments collect and analyze data to ensure quality care that is safe and effective for patients. Positive outcomes are crucial for success, and are measured objectively to monitor, and revise improvement programs implemented. Regulatory and accreditation agencies set the standards for patient safety defining quality indicators that health care organizations measure, and evaluate to sustain accreditation with compliance. Data proves compliance with best practices and positive outcomes, increasing reimbursement and the number of individuals who will come to the organization for care. Administration leadership has found that

The study’s findings revealed that of the 183 patients that fell while hospitalized, the average age was 63.4 with the ages ranging from 17 to 96. It also discovered that many of the falls were unassisted, occurred in the evenings and in the patient’s hospital room, and had fallen during ambulation. It was also discovered that falls related to elimination increased the risks for injury. Out of the medical, cardiology, neurology, surgical, oncology, orthopedic, and women/infant units that were included in the study, the medical and neurology units had the highest incidence of falls. These units also had the highest patient to nurse ratios (Hitcho et al., 2008). These findings also determined that falls occurred when patients were unassisted, ambulating, and were related to elimination needs. Because of these findings, prevention measures should focus on increasing staff assistance while patients are ambulating and supervised/assisted toileting schedules need to be provided. The findings can be applied to all areas of nursing. Despite prevention efforts, threats to reimbursement, and good intentions, falls still remain a serious and costly

Falls are a serious health concern for people and an important issue for nurses. Many factors contribute to the causes of falls, apart from cognitive impairment. The consequences of patient falls are becoming a serious issue for patients and society.

Patients who fall will have longer hospital stay and increase in hospital bill. According to Huey-Ming (2015), “In United States hospitals, patients with fall injuries stay in the hospital an average of 6.3 extra days longer and their care costs $13,000 more compared with patients who do not fall during hospital stays” (p.326). Joint commission national safety goal requires hospitals to reduce the risk of harm from falls. “The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services identified falls as a preventable healthcare acquired

The incidence of falls on the medical surgical unit remains consistently higher than the other Advocate hospitals on the medical surgical units during the past two years. Research has identified multiple possible causes of potential reasons patient falls still have a high incident rate. If nurses can recognize potential risk factors for potential falls, this can eliminate patient injury and long term effects. Falls can happen ay any time of the day, and do not discriminated against individuals. They happen on different types of units and facilities, but are there more occurrences on certain units or specific times of day? Let’s see what what our others have found while preforming research on patient falls.

There has been a substantial body of research building in regards to patient falls due to the injuries and the liabilities that may result from these situations. Fall-related injuries can be some of the most common, disabling, and expensive health conditions encountered by adults, especially older adults (Simmons, 2010). The research has identified many specific risk factors including environmental hazards, adaptive equipment maintenance, psychotropic drug use, physical therapy or exercise, staff education, post fall problem solving, and hip protectors (Colon-Emeric, et al., 2006). However, using these

Patients’ safety is a priority in today’s health care system. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that hospitals will no longer be reimbursed for certain nosocomial conditions, thus placing a great demand on healthcare systems to prevent hospital-acquired health related injuries such as falls (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2008). Nosocomial conditions, such as falls are conditions that are preventable that occur in the clinical or hospital setting. A fall is an unexpected event in which the participant comes to rest on the ground, floor, or lower level (Amador & Loera, 2006). Fall related accidents, injuries and death remain a major problem among hospitalized patients. It is estimated that one out of three adult patients over the age of 65 will fall (CDC, 2014). Falls have detrimental effects and impact on patients’ health and outcome as well as hospitalizations costs. Falls have attributed to broken bones, fractured hips, fear of walking alone, brain trauma, and even death. In 2012, the direct medical costs of older adult falls were $30 billion (CDC, 2014). According to Tzeng, Yin, & Grunawalt (2008), even the length of stay is affected, with inpatient falls with injury resulting in a 7.5-day increase in total length of stay. The attributed cost of falls, increased in injuries and prolonged hospital stay have a great impact on Advanced Practice Nurses’ (APNs) practice. The focus of this paper is to discuss evidenced-based

Falls among hospitalized patients is a common problem that has an impact on patient safety. Approximately 35% of inpatient falls result in injury while about 5% of the falls result in serious injuries which are potentially fatal (Bouldin et al., 2013). Examples of such damages caused by falls include subdural hematomas and other traumatic brain injuries, fractures, lacerations, bruises among others (Bouldin et al., 2013). Falls are not only restricted to the elderly and frail patients who possess significant risk factors. Instead, any patient of any age can be predisposed to falls because of physiological changes rendered on their bodies by their medical conditions, procedures, medications, etc. The impacts of falls among hospitalized patients

The procedures were conducted using the format of questionnaires. The questions on the questionnaire were based on these four main areas: cause of falls, nursing staffs intervention in fall prevention, routines of documentation and report, and experiences and reactions of nursing staff related to fall incidents. The 64 questions were distributed into four different categories of people. The four different categories are registered nurse, enrolled nurses, unskilled nurses’ aid and other professions (Struksness et al., 2011, p.3 ). Out of the 64 questions, 7 were background questions. The other 57 questions were distributed among the four main areas of fall. 28

TJC formed a National Patient Safety Goal, which is targeted to “reduce the risk of patient harm from falls” (TJC, 2015). With falls being prevalent in the healthcare setting, it has been brought to the attention of nurses and researchers to find and put to test the best methods to reduce falls. Even though prior research has generated clinical guidelines that show that fall prevention interventions can be effective, often have not been translated into everyday practice due to practitioner preference as well as organization environment. As a result, the healthcare setting has experienced a rise in fall related injuries as well as rising healthcare costs.

Falling is a crucial issue among the hospitals. Even the hospitals make all the efforts to prevent falls, falls still occur frequently and some repeatedly. According to Currie (2008), approximately 700000 to 1000000 individuals fall in the united states hospitals each year. A fall in a health care organization is considered a never-event by Medicare and Medicaid services(CMS) (Cox et al., 2015). As the result, health care facilities are not reimbursed for hospitalized falls which increase the economic burden of hospitals.

The outcomes of interest will be the specific fall incidences for both the treatment (participants subjected to regular exercise programs) and control groups (participants not subjected to the regular exercise programs. It is expected that the differences noted for fall incidence will be credited to the exercise program. The source of information on fall incidence will be from weekly interviews with the participants where they are asked whether they has experienced any falls in the course of that week. The collected data would then be evaluated using ratio analysis that quantifies the outcome differences for the treatment and control groups in terms of magnitude and direction. In addition, confidence interval will be presented as a measure

For a qualitative research article I chose the topic Inpatient Falls. The title of my article is Nurses' solutions to prevent inpatient falls in hospital patient rooms. The joint committee has emphasized the need for hospitals to prevent inpatient falls. Medicare and Medicaid services will not reimburse hospitals for any care provided that has resulted from a fall. This research article is characterized qualitative because the data was compiled by interviewing nurses, each interview lasted 45-60 minutes. The article is more descriptive in nature. The interview asked nurses to share their opinions as to what causes a patient to fall and how falls can be prevented in an inpatient setting. The completed interviews