Fall Prevention in Hospitalized Patients Essay

As a nurse we want to ensure that our patients receive a high quality of care. Patients should feel safe and satisfied while hospitalized. Many hospitals are continually looking for answers and implementation to significantly reduce the inpatient fall incidents. According to Bechdel et al (2014), the top priority of health care organizations nationwide is to reduce and eliminate falls within the clinical care settings. One of the serious problems in acute care hospital is the patient’s fall. The unfamiliar environment, acute and co-morbid illnesses, prolonged bedrest, polypharmacy, and the placement of tubes and catheters are common challenges that place patients at risk of falling. Most of the falls that I have encountered while working involves

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

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.

“A patient fall, defined as a sudden, unintentional change in position, coming to rest on the ground or other lower level, is a month the most commonly reported adverse hospital events, with more than 1 million occurring annually” (Mion,2014). Evidence supports these events lead to increase hospital expenses, longer hospital stays and mortality. With the inclusion of interdisciplinary teams and organization management to implement “all hands on deck’ with environment and scheduled intentional rounding, the goal is to decrease these event which would lead to a decrease in the negative impacts and outcomes of hospital stays.

Falls are considered a leading cause of mortality and injury among older adults and majority of the falls occurs while hospitalized. One would think being in the hospital would be one of the safest places for older adults as far as fall prevention is concern due to the fact that hospitals provide staffing around the clock for patients but more and more falls have been occurring in the hospital especially in the older adult population. Fall is an unintended descent to the ground. It raises public and family care liability; it also decreases patient’s functioning because it causes pain and suffering, and increases medical costs (Saverino et al, 2015). The Center for Disease Control

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.

In USA nearly 30 % of community dwelling adults older than 65 years fall. This number is relatively higher for those

Falls in a health care setting are costly to the patient, the health care facility and may affect the reimbursement that insurance gives to hospitals, yet they are preventable. Falls can be minor with just a few bumps and bruises or they can be major which can result in death. Not only are falls harmful to the patient but there is a lot of money and time that gets added up after a fall occurs *** There are many factors as to why a fall could take place, but being aware of the risk that a patient is a fall risk from the beginning can help avoid a fall from ever occurring. Accurately identifying a patient as a fall risk and communicating to other staff within 24 hours of admission is key to help in the prevention of falls.

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

Falls are more common among people with advanced age, especially females aged above 85 years. People from the most disadvantaged social groups are also more likely to experience inpatient falls.

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

Over the course of a year, one-third of older adults over the age of 65 will fall. When a person falls, such as an older adult, their hospital stay may be twice as long as they intended it to be. For example in the emergency department, about 2.5 million older adults come in because of a fall. Older adults who are admitted into the hospital account for 25% of falls, while people in the nursing homes who are admitted account for around 40%. Of the 40% of nursing home falls, 25% do not return to the facility because of death. With those that do not live in a nursing home and fall, about 9,500 will die because of a fall. With the increased number of falls happening each year, the deaths will continue to rise. A majority of the people who do fall may not result in death, but will cause a secondary problem (Important Facts about Falls, 2015).

Falls top the list among the external causes of unintended injuries. The falls are coded as E880-E888 in the international classification of disease-9 (ICD-9), and W00-W19 that constitutes a broad variety of falls including falls on the same level, upper level, and other random falls. For a definition, falls are the inadvertently coming to repose on the ground, floor, or other levels excluding the purposeful change in a position to relax in furniture, wall, or the ground itself (WHO, 2007). The frequency of falls increases with the increase in age. Old people living in nursing homes fall frequently than old people living within people in a given community (WHO, 2007). In addition, the proportion of hospital admittance as a result of falls for people aged 60 and above in Australia ranges from 1.6 to 3.0 in population of 10 000 people.

Every year, one out of three people adults older fall: 2.3 million are brought to emergency centers just because of said fall and around 662,000were sent to the hospital. The causes are said to be medication, health state, environment and vision hazard, environmental hazard is an important one because it usually deals with the