Patient Falls
Preventing Patient Falls
The primary goal of every hospital and care facility is the health and safety of their patients. While some problems, such as illness cannot be avoided, compounding illness with injuries can and should be avoided. Risks such as slipping, tripping, and falling while in the hospital are an increasing problem for hospitals. The purpose of this paper is to identify a preventable patient injury and suggest a corrective policy for the hospital to reduce the amount of incidence.
Identification of Problem
Patient falls are a growing problem in hospitals. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "In 2004, 14,900 people 65 and older died from injuries related to unintentional falls; about 1.8 million people 65 and older were treated in emergency departments for nonfatal injuries from falls, and more than 433,000 of these patients were hospitalized." (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2007). These falls are not only common, but very expensive. According to the Wall Street Journal, the costs of treating the resulting injuries for a hospital-related fall is equal to $1.08 billion annually, or approximately $15,000 to $30,000 per fall. And roughly 244,500 nursing home residents suffer a serious fall injury annually, with costs estimated at $4.9 billion in 2005 (Landro, 2005). Addittionaly, this problem extends to all ages of patients. According to a 2003 study, half of all patients that fell were less than 65 years old (Hitcho, 2004). These falls are not only expensive...
When these needs are not met, then patients can become fearful or embarrassed resulting in a reluctance to remain active, thus impeding recovery. Additionally, a patient is not likely to seek medical assistance from a hospital where a fall happened again. The goal is to maintain patient safety and confidence by reducing falls through accurate diagnosing and risk assessment of all patients.
Timeline
Before anything can be done to properly solve this problem, the extent of the problem must be determined and a solution sought. The first step to improving this problem will be a study of documented patient falls for the past three years. This study will give the hospital a basis to assess improvements. The information should be charted by month for the past three years and then forecasting done to determine the predicted amount of falls for the next three years if nothing were to change.
Next, a method for determining the patient's fall risk must be used on all patients admitted to the hospital. A sample of the Morse Fall Scale is available on the U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs website. See appendix for this chart. The chart assesses basic symptoms and characteristics of the patient's visit and determines how high of the risk that particular patient is for falling. The risk factor goes from 0 to 100 with a score of 0-24 being no risk, 25-50…
