Evidence-Based Practice on Hourly Rounding Impact of Hourly Rounding on Falls Preventions, Reduction of Pressure Ulcers and Call Light Use

In the contemporary health environment, falls are the common phenomenon that may cause fatal injuries to older adults of 60 years and older. Nearly 50% of hospitalized older adults face the risks of falls that can lead to a fatal or non-fatal injury. Consequently, falls can lead to negative effects that include elevated hospital costs and longer hospital stay. To overcome high rates of falls within a healthcare environment, different organizations have devised different strategies for hospitalized older adults. While these health practices are devised to enhance safety among patients, however, all these health practices are ineffective to prevent falls. For example, call lights use may be effective to prevent falls, however, its overuse can increase the nursing workloads, and consequently reduce nursing satisfactions.

An hourly rounding has been identified as an effective proactive health practice that can reduce falls, pressure ulcers, and improve patient's satisfactions. In other words, hourly rounding is defined as a proactive and systematic health intervention that healthcare organizations design to meet the need of in-patients in order to promote patient safety and satisfactions. Typically, an hourly rounding is particularly effective for the management of the pressure ulcer since the disease is one of the top causes of untimely death in the United States. Thus, pressure ulcer occurs among people having a nerve damage or limited mobility. A patient with a pressure ulcer suffers from oxygen deprivation in the affected area. Repositioning is an appropriate strategy to manage a pressure ulcer where patients are moved into a different position to allow the body to remove pressure and redistribute the body to enhance an effective blood circulation. Since patient satisfaction is very critical for health organizations, hourly rounding has been identified as an effective...

Olrich, Kalman & Nigolian (2012) carry out a qualitative research on the impact of hourly rounding on fall rates and the use of call lights by inpatient who have undergone medical-surgical operations. Despite that that the research is well written, nevertheless, the authors do not provide a research question that reflects a phenomenon guiding a research process. Moreover, the authors did not provide a comprehensive review of the literature. While the researchers described the sampling method, however, the authors did not provide an adequate information on sample size. Although the study described the data collection and analysis process, however, the researchers did not follow appropriate steps when conducting the data analysis. While the findings are delivered in an appropriate context, however, the study did not discuss the appropriate ethical procedures used to protect the subject participants,
Meade, Bursell & Ketelsen (2006) in their research use the quantitative technique to investigate the impact of hourly rounding and call light use on patients' satisfaction. While the researchers provide the literature review, however, the literature review section is merged with…