The Center For Disease Control

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,

Since healthcare organizations throughout the country strive for positive patient outcomes and patient satisfaction, preventing falls among patients in healthcare settings remains a nursing staff priority. Unfortunately, fall prevention is not a new problem. Nurses face the challenge of recognizing patients who may be at high risk for falls and intervening to prevent falls on a daily basis. To identify areas for improvement in fall prevention, a thorough review of the organizational function of the medical unit at Rex Healthcare in Raleigh, North Carolina, utilizing Roussel’s Evaluating Organizational Function Tool was completed (2013, fig 7-51). Interestingly, even with great effort from nursing staff to prevent falls, they appear to continue to occur on the medical unit. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review current literature to identify whether or not an association has been found between the rate of falls and hourly rounding.

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.

Falls are the leading cause of medical complications in health care facilities in the United States. Statistics from The Joint Commission shows that hundreds of thousands of patients fall in hospitals every year, with 30-50% of those falls resulting in injury (“Preventing falls and fall-related injuries,” 2015). Furthermore, the consequences of falls are that injured patients will require longer hospital stay leading to an increase in healthcare costs (“Preventing falls and fall-related injuries,” 2015). To prevent falls, health care facilities have implemented evidence-based intervention strategies such as fall risk assessment tools and faster call light response time.

Falls can be categorized into unanticipated physiologic, anticipated physiologic, accidental or intentional (as cited in Cox et al., 2015). Furthermore, the causes of inpatient falls include patients’ intrinsic and extrinsic risk factors as well as organizational or workforce factors (Cox et al., 2015). The methods of fall prevention are tailored to patients’ unique intrinsic or extrinsic risks; however, fall prevention tactics are not created for an individual, they are used in various patient populations (Cox et al., 2015). Moreover, the scale from the fall risk assessment tools, for example: Morse Falls Risk Assessment Scale and the Hendrich I Falls Risk Assessment Scale, do not specify the type of fall for individual, making it hard to design or direct fall prevention approaches by individual 's physiological or environmental risks (Cox et al., 2015). According to Cox et al. (2015), "there is a clear need to gain a broader

Safety is the most important factor for patients receiving care within healthcare organizations. Health care workers and team members most especially nurses play an important role in the protection of the patients ensuring prevention of falls and injuries that occur as a result from falls. Falls are known to be the second leading cause of death from unintentional injuries worldwide (Mitchell, 2017). Nurses have the onus to keep their patients safe from falls and associated injuries daily. Patients that have been hospitalized are at higher risk of falls. Nurses have various tasks to be done per shift and it is important to ensure time is made available to meet

The problem I have chosen to decipher is patient falls in the healthcare setting. There are numerous ways to decrease the risk of falls, but today we will focus on prevention. Early prevention is the obvious key to avoiding falls. A contributing factor that goes hand in hand with prevention is communication amongst co-workers. As nurses, it is our job to be advocates for patients, and by using the correct tools given we can prevent these sentinel events. This problem was chosen because I currently work at a neuro rehab facility where falls are common due to severe neurological deficits. Personally, each time a patient falls my

The CDC is a worldwide resource for control of diseases. While the Georgia Composite Medical Board is an agency that licenses anyone in a healthcare job an example would be physicians. This board investigates healthcare professionals complaints. They also discipline the healthcare professionals who violate the Medical Practice Act. They can violate other laws though.

The in-patient hospital setting has an estimated 700,000-1,000,000 falls annually, with one third of these falls being preventable (Bock, 2017). There are also repercussions from the falls such reimbursement costs for treatment of falls, which can range from $7,000-$30,000 and the cost of legal claims (Bock, 2017). The use of sitters as a fall prevention intervention has received various reviews on the actual efficiency and rate of success (Bock, 2017). However, the annual cost of sitters has been reported to be $1,000,000 (Bock, 2017). Although the welfare of the patient is the number one priority of the facility, there should be more options for the staff in order to prevent the astronomical cost of delegating sitters. Currently, there is no best practice for implementation of fall prevention interventions (Bock,

In conclusion, several studies have outlined that falls and fall related injuries are leading cause of mobility and mortality amongst hospitalised patients (Ang, Mordiffi, & Wong, 2011; Sahota et al., 2014; Shuman et al., 2016). According to Ang, Mordiffi, and Wong (2011) targeted multiple strategies focuses on identifying patient’s individualise fall risk such cognitive status, medication of the patient that can contribute to mobility issues and a medical condition that could affect the patient bodily functions. Similarly, Sahota et al. (2014) outline that nurses’ role is to provide health teachings and to develop specific interventions that can minimise patient risk for fall. Additionally, health instructions needs to be provided not limited to the patient but also with the family.As a result, patients will become more educated and play a more active role in their care.

Additionally, individual risk factors such as medications, vital signs, and patient’s functional and emotional status on admission were assessed (Rheaume, 2015). Moreover, other factors examined included: time of day when the fall occurred, location of falls, unit staffing, risk assessment score, rounds, fall prevention interventions at the time of fall, equipment related to fall, people with patient at time of fall and patient activity at the time of fall. Post fall data included injury sustained, treatment of related injury and patient outcomes (Rheaume, 2015). A total of six patients were reviewed, three females and three

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2011, para. 2) defines a sharps injury as, “a penetrating stab wound from a needle, scalpel, or other sharp object that may result in exposure to blood or other body fluids.” Different types of sharps include intravenous cannulas, butterfly needles, hypodermic needles, phlebotomy needles, lancets, scalpels, suture needles, razors, scissors, tissues, and fragments of bone (Weston, 2013, p.208). Sharps injuries affect a great number of health care professionals in the workplace . It is estimated that

A patient fall can be defined as an event that results in the patient coming to rest on the ground or other surface lower than the body. Falls not only have physical consequences, but also have financial and emotional consequences. Falls unfortunately lengthen their hospital stay resulting in an average increase of 6.3 days. Patient who experience a fall may also experience negative psychological affects and social consequences. The loss of self-confidence in ambulating safely may result in self-imposed functional limitations which can contribute to loss of independence, decreased quality of life, and even death. Inpatient falls are associated with a higher rate of discharges to extended care facilities, and extreme fear of falling has resulted in self-isolation and wheel-chair dependency.

As the Center for Disease Control (CDC) (2015) confirms, human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection (STD or STI) among men and women; it is so common that nearly every sexually active individual will get it at some point in their lives. With about 14 million new cases each year, the CDC (2015) reports a prevalence of about 79 million cases of persons currently infected with HPV in the United States (US). Also, with cervical cancer being the most serious outcome related to HPV, the state of Georgia falls in the mid-interval of 6.66 to 7.87 with HPV-related cervical cancer per 100,000 people. It is evident that this disease is more prevalent in rural areas and among underserved populations. HPV is actually

Patient safety is a priority of facilities as well as governmental agencies. Regulatory agencies require data about falls because they have been prioritized as a high-risk problems resulting in fractures, surgeries, disabilities, and even death. Preventing falls is very important, especially if patient safety is a documented as a priority for an organization. According to Dlugacz (2006), regulatory agencies require hospitals and health care organizations to correlate human resource indicators, such as staffing ratios with quality indicators, such as falls. It is believed that lack of appropriate staff plays a part in the number of falls that patients have. However, it was in conclusive that there was a correlation between the number of staff and patient falls. One indicator, such as staffing should not be used as the only determining factor for patient falls because there could be a number of factors such as the patient’s age, illness, level of consciousness, mental state, and environmental factors.