The Hendrich II Fall Risk Model: A Case Study

One afternoon a 67 year-old man presented to the emergency department of a small, rural hospital complaining of severe left leg and hip pain following a fall at home. The patient had no past history of falls. He had a history of impaired glucose intolerance, prostate cancer, hypercholesterolemia and hyperlipidemia. The patient’s current medications were atorvastatin and oxycodone for chronic back pain. The patient stated his pain was ten out of ten on a scale of one to ten with ten being the worst. The left leg appeared shorter than the right, edema was present in the calf, as was ecchymosis and he had limited range of motion. After an evaluation in triage by a registered nurse and a subsequent examination by the emergency department physician, a plan was established to sedate the patient using moderation sedation protocol and perform a manual reduction of the hip.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) is as useful as the Morse Fall Scale in determining which patients

Falls in the elderly is a significant health problem, which can lead to severe issues such as morbidity and mortality. The topic of falls within the elderly was chosen so that the many interventions, risks, and awareness strategies can be further explored within this paper. Throughout clinical practice I was intrigued by the number of patients that have fallen and the strategies that health care organizations take to prevent falls. However, I was concerned by the lack of awareness in the community related to falls in the elderly. The topic of falls in the elderly is multifactor in the sense that there are many intersectional factors that can result in falls. The significant impact of falls in the elderly and the consequences that falls have

Falls are triggered by multifaceted factors with numerous dangers that include either long or short term influencing factors. The connections between these factors may be altered by the person?s age, ailments, illnesses, diagnoses such as Parkinson?s, stroke, diabetes mellitus and arthritis, or their surroundings. The major fall risk factors for elderly include their advancing age, loss of muscle strength, unsteady gait, impaired balance, incontinence of bowel or bladder, depression, cognitive impairment, due to

Falls remains one of the most concern regarding patient safety problems for older adults in the hospital setting. While patient falls is frequently occurring in hospitals, they often cause serious injuries, death, and additional cost. Nobody can prevent all patients falls, but hospitals can significantly reduce the ones they can when implementing a fall prevention program. The purpose of this study is to reduce the incidence of older adults falls at hospitals and evaluate the factors that contribute to the risk of falling. The study will use a retrospective experimental comparison design of two groups in the hospital setting. The patients at the medical unit will receive the risk falls assessment for six-month while patients at the surgical

In the peer reviewed article Management of Falls in Community- Dwelling Older Adults, the authors clearly explain how an individualized patient assessment must be done to identify potential fall risk factors. Medical history of the patient, body functions, activities, participation and cognition are some of the aspects to take in consideration regarding an old adult health care. Beside those factors, environmental hazard is one of the most common causes of falling in old people even when they are healthy (Avin, Keith G, ; Hanke, Timothy A; Kirk-Sanchez, Neva; McDonough, Christine M; Shubert, Tiffany E; et al, Jun 2015). Because elderly

Mr. A is a 74-year-old male who presented to the emergency department with a chief complaint of leg pain after he fell at home. He states he got up around 1 am to use the restroom, he then felt unsteady, lost his balance and fell onto his left hip. Patient was found in that position by his wife, who then called EMS services. Patient complains of sharp, continuous pain in left hip that radiates down into his left thigh. Patient admits to occasional periods of weakness, and onset occurs when changing positions from sitting to standing, where he occasionally feels like he is going to lose his balance. He describes periods of weakness as short usually around 1-2 minutes, and characterizes his

The hospital can implement a survey to find out how much the employees know about interventions and preventions of falls and injury risk and develop a culture that make all staff members feel encouraged to take actions like addressing spills and malfunctioning equipment in a timely manner. According to Grant, McEnerney, and Proctor (2013), reviewing falls risk assessment, giving staff additional falls prevention training, using alarms and monitors, providing patients with yellow fall alert bands, providing more additional staff in the unit resulted in a huge improvement in reducing falls ‘total number of falls went from 277 during 2010-2011 period to 248 during 2011-2012 period and Falls with harm went from 42 during 2010-2011 period to 18 during 2012-2013 period.’ A continues comprehensive training and education sessions for nurses and staff to enhance knowledge about certain assessment is crucial and can help decrease fall risks and injuries among hospitalized patients aged 60 and older. One study suggested that nurses utilize a screening process that is easy to use and implement at any setting. The Ashen Fall Prevention Scale is a combination of a simple questionnaire and a safe quick balance tool which help the nurse or any healthcare provider to identify whether a balance issue exists or not (Pape, Schemmann, Foerster, & Knobe, 2015). This scale will also help identify the specific factors contributing to falls ‘vision or hearing impairment, medication, certain diseases…’, which can assist the nurse to come up with a particular prevention strategies specific to each situation. It is important to use evidence based fall prevention strategies such as the Ashen Fall Prevention Scale to reduce the incidence of falls among elderly. On the other hand, it is vital to have a yearly evaluation to assess the learned skills

The patient is an 88-year-old female who fell while walking at home in the assisted living facility where she lives and sustained a fracture of the right wrist. She was evaluated in the ED by her physical therapy they felt that she was very unstable. She need moderate assist for all activities and they were really unable to walk her, therefore she is admitted. She is known to have coronary artery disease, CVA, Parkinson's disease, increased lipids, and chronic atrial fibrillation. The patient is admitted inpatient and despite intensive inpatient therapies she was requiring tremendous amount of assistance and I believe she required acute inpatient hospitalization because she was an unsafe discharge. She will require follow-up in a subacute

Many people continue to raise alarm over a big number of old people who are falling in nursing homes. This is according to reports which indicates that old people are nursing injuries which caused by falls. Research indicates that old people who are from 65 years of age and above are the most affected by this problem. Most of these people do not have sufficient strength and this leads to falls. When they fall, some get injured where even some lose their lives. This being the case, different statistics have been presented regarding the number of old people who fall and those who are affected by this problem. It is important to note that a large number of old people suffer from various sicknesses. These leads to their lack of ability to support themselves and thus the cause of their falls. Nursing homes are increasingly reporting cases of old people who fall. There are groups and individuals who have raised concerns regarding the increasing numbers of these falls in nursing homes. Some have indicated that this is led by lack of proper care which is caused by recklessness in various duties. Some nursing homes have inadequate personnel to assist old people and this leads to

HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS: This patient is a 45-year-old male. Gunshot wound to the left foot, handgun two days ago. He was seen in the ER. He was referred for followup today. He is doing okay. He complains of some pain. Otherwise, he is doing alright. He is on crutches and in a splint.

Being a smaller clinic we have the ability to build rapport with our patients and effectively address all of their needs. We have a smaller group of geriatric patients who are the most common demographic associated with the risk of falling. We have the ability to offer fall risk assessments to all of our patients over 65 who may be susceptible to a fall. Since we have the ability to know our patients personally, we have the advantage to stress the urgency of fall risk factors and provide referrals and educational materials on a case-to-case basis.

of the elderly people above the age of 65, experience at least one fall per year. The growing

“In the hospitalized adult patient, will the use of multifactorial fall risk assessments and management planning (Morse Fall Assessment) be more efficient in comparison to the current risk assessment (Heinrich model II) practice to prevent falls in the months of November- December in comparison to September- October.”

Dealing with immobile patients is a big part of a registered nurse’s daily tasks. Mrs. Simmons a 78 year old patient who fell and broke her hip must be carefully monitored so that she does not develop further health problems. It is important to monitor and act accordingly with immobile patients, because failure to do so can result in health risks and complications. Not only do immobile patients require a different level of care, their rehabilitation is also different based on the reason as to why they are immobile. Besides keeping the patient safe and secure it is also important to keep the attending nurse safe by using the proper lifting and moving techniques, as well as the