The Importance of Preventing the Number of Falls in a Hospital

Today it is a requirement of the Joint Commission for all healthcare facilities to have a fall-prevention program in place. Facilities are also required to conduct an ongoing evaluation of the program (Hubbartt, Davis & Kautz, 2013). Most prevention programs include the use of a bed alarm, but can bed alarms alone prevent falls? This paper will investigate the use of a bed alarm being used as the only tool to prevent falls. It is often found that even when a bed alarm is sounded the patient has already fallen before any nursing personal can get into the room. This paper will also investigate the use of other prevention measures that can be used independently or in conjunction with bed alarms to work toward decreasing the number of falls and the related change theory that would work best to implement this change in practice. Nurses are leaders and should always be working to identifying and changing problems that appear to be evident with keeping in mind the best interest of the patient, their families, and the nursing staff.

First to identify factors that contribute to a patient falling. Many patients that are appear to be at a high fall risk and appropriate for the use of a bed alarm are patients who are cognitively impaired, who have an unsteady gait, patients that have many wires or lines and need the assistance of a nurse or patient care assistant (PCA) to ambulate and patients who are a threat to violence. Other factors that many contribute to falls include the bed or chair exit alarm not being turned on, the alarm not being properly set up, family members turning off the bed alarm or trying to assist the patient to get out of bed, alarm malfunction, or infrequent checks on the patient to ensure they are comfortable a...

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... lead to larger results. Finally, the eighth step is to make the change stick, even though by now every team member should be demonstrating the new interventions the nursing team should work to make sure that this continues throughout practice. Providing rewards for accomplishments such as no falls per one month will help to make sure everyone is continuing to work toward that goal.

In conclusion, it is evident that patient falls can cause a multitude of problems and for many hospitals and nursing facilities falls seem to be an issue. Working to reduce these falls with more than one intervention has proven beneficial. Preventing the number of falls in a hospital will not only work to prevent the injuries that arise when a patient has fallen it will also help to reduce the number of times a patient is readmitted to the hospitals, and delaying patients recovery.