SDW news brief: Reducing in-hospital patient falls
Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, October 29, 2010
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Fall-related injuries can be some of the most common, disabling, and expensive health conditions encountered by adults, especially older adults. But it's an issue where identifying the best ways to prevent them—especially within the confines of a healthcare organization—can be quite challenging.
Providers are finding some success through efforts such as installing alarms, designing rooms with bathrooms closer to the bed, targeting the timing of certain medication administration, regularly updating fall-risk assessments that are communicated to the care team, and talking about falls with patients, whether they are hospitalized or not. It also means evaluating patients as they proceed through a continuum of care after they leave a hospital.
But the overarching problem appears to be that "we can't find a magic prediction rule that appears to discriminate between people falling and people who fall and injure themselves," Shorr says. "The problem is that most hospital patients are moderate fall risks. If you walk around a hospital, you will find stickers indicating risks of falling on probably 70% of all doors."
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Source: HealthLeaders Media
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