Nursing Stats

¶ … Incidence of in-Hospital Falls in Geriatric Patients Before and After the Introduction of an Interdisciplinary Team -- Based Fall-Prevention Intervention Wolfgang von Renteln-Kruse, MD, and Tom Krause, Dipl Geogr Falls are the leading cause of hospital related injuries in the United States. There are a plethora of different factors that can be considered as possible causes of fall related incidents which cover a fairly broad range of concepts that apply to patients of all ages and over a range of different scenarios.

As a result the fall incident rate has been the subject of many academic research projects as well as health care facilities due to the fact that world and professionals alike as inpatient falls are serious patient safety and quality issues. Fall prevention is an important aspect to patient safety and effective communication among staff, patients, and their families is required to mitigate potential risks.

There have been a number of studies done that have tried to understand the implications of various intervention strategies to mitigate the frequency of fall related accidents. The article analyzed is one that has done just that. Patients injured in a fall incur increased hospital costs due to additional treatment and longer lengths of treatment.

Analysis In-hospital falls are frequent unwanted events in older patients, with varying occurrence according to the type of hospital service, although reports on fall-prevention interventions are more limited than those from the community or long-term care facilities.

Population The study took place in the geriatric clinic of an academic teaching hospital in the northwest corner of Hamburg, Germany (250,000 inhabitants in this area), serving approximately 2,300 inpatients annually (a predominantly urban population) and accounting for 22% of geriatric inhospital patients in Hamburg.24 One third of the patients are referred from the hospital's emergency room or admission ward (integrated geriatric service).25 The remaining patients are directly referred by general practitioners and internists (35%); come from other hospital departments, including intensive care and stroke units; or are referred from other hospitals in and around Hamburg for acute care and early rehabilitation (Renteln-Kruse, Krause, & Georgr, 2007).

Before the intervention was introduced, 893 falls were recorded. After the intervention was implemented, only 468 falls were recorded (incidence rate ratio (IRR)50.82, 95% confidence interval (CI)50.73 -- 0.92), 240 versus 129 total injurious falls (IRR50.84, 95% CI50.67 -- 1.04), 10 versus nine falls with fracture (IRR51.40, 95% CI50.51 -- 3.85) and 611 versus 330 fallers. The relative risk of falling was significantly reduced (0.77, 95% CI50.68 -- 0.88) (Renteln-Kruse, Krause, & Georgr, 2007) The.