Prevention of Falls in Hospitalized Older Adults

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Recommended: Prevention of falls in hospitals

Falls prevention of hospitalized older adults in acute medical Units: Evidence based nursing interventions.
Introduction
A fall is a lethal event that results from an amalgamation of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors which predispose an elderly person to the incident (Naqvi et al 2009). The frequency of hospital admission due to falls for older people in Australia, Canada, UK and Northern Ireland range from 1.6 to 3.0 per 10 000 population (WHO 2012). The prevalence of senior citizen’s falls in acute care settings varies widely and the danger of falling rises with escalating age or frailty. Falls of hospitalized older adults are one of the major patient safety issues in terms of morbidity, mortality, and decreased socialization (Swartzell et al. 2013). Because the multi-etiological factors contribute to the incidence and severity of falls in older society, each cause should be addressed or alleviated to prevent patient’s injuries during their hospital stay (Titler et al. 2011). Therefore, nursing interventions play a pivotal role in preventing patient injury related to hospital falls (Johnson et al. 2011). Unfortunately, the danger of falling rises with age and enormously affect one third of older people with ravages varying from minimal injury to incapacities, which may lead to premature death (Johnson et al. 2011). In addition, to the detrimental impacts on patient falls consequently affect the patient’s family members, care providers, and the health organization emotionally as well as financially (Ang et al. 2011). Even though falls in hospital affect young as well as older patients, the aged groups are more likely to get injured than the youth (Boltz et al. 2013). Devastating problems, which resulted from the falls, can c...

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... Practice 25(2), 127- 152.

Tucker S. J., Bieber P. L., Attlesey-Pries J. M., Olson M. E.& Dierkhising R. A. (2012).
Outcomes and Challenges in Implementing Hourly Rounds to Reduce Falls in Orthopedic
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Tzeng H. & Yin C. (2010) Nurses' response time to call lights and fall occurrences. MEDSURG
Nursing 19(5), 266-272.

Yates K. M., & Creech Tart. (2012). Acute care patient falls: evaluation of a revised fall prevention program following comparative analysis of psychiatric and medical patient falls.
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World Health Organisation(2012) WHo Global report on falls Prevention in older Age. Available from http://www.who.int/ageing/publications/Falls_prevention [accessed on 09/11/2013].

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