Fall Prevention Program Summary

Creating a comprehensive fall prevention program is within every hospital's reach when practical strategies and teamwork are used to provide a safe environment for care delivery. Successful fall prevention programs have measurable attributes, which include:
• Research-based risk factors that are applied at the point of care

• Consistent attention to environmental hazards for all patients
• Nursing and medical interventions aligned with reduction of fall risk factors for
individual patients

• Continuous learning about unit-specific fall occurrences derived from good fall data
• Effective communication of patient risk and teamwork among caregivers and across units — no matter where the patient is in the hospital.
Lets all work together to prevent patient falls in our hospitals and keep our patients safe during hospital visit.

Fall Presentation General Facts

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Fall contributing factors

Preventing patient falls and its related injuries in acute care settings has been an elusive goal for many hospitals. As we already know that falls are high-risk and high-cost problems for many healthcare facilities, and there are several factors that contributed to the complexity of sustaining true fall reduction and the avoidance of harm and injuries. For example, an aging population, rising patient acuity, nurse shortages, and an inefficient work environment for caregivers can make the process improvement a challenge. Leadership plays an instrumental role in understanding the problem, establishing a safety climate culture, and improving the work environment of caregivers so that much needed direct nursing time for patient care can be increased. What factors do your hospital face to prevent falls?

Hitcho, E. B., Krauss, M. J., Birge, S., et.al. (2004). Characteristics and circumstances of falls in a hospital setting: A prospective analysis. Journal of Geriatric Internal Medicine, 19(7), 732-739.

Quiz Feedback

How did you do on the fall quiz with captain safety? Are there other questions that captain safety missed? Please feel free to comments on the quiz presentation

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Research on Falls

Falls in the hospital affect young as well as older patients, are often unassisted, and involve elimination-related activities. Further studies are necessary to prevent hospital falls and reduce fall injury rates. The majority of inpatient fall studies is retrospective and relies solely on data from medical records or incident reports. Information from risk management databases is often incomplete and may not identify potential causal factors for falls. Most studies often focused only on fall risk factors and did not examine contributing factors or circumstances of the falls (e.g., what triggered the fall).

Salgado, R., Lord, S. R., Packer, J., & Ehrlich, F. (1994). Factors associated with falling in elderly hospital patients. Gerontology. 40(2), 325–334

PowerPoint Fall Prevention

Fall Prevention Presentation1