Nursing Interventions to Prevent Patient Falls
Overview
This paper examines nursing interventions designed to prevent patient falls in hospital settings, which represent a significant category of hospital incidents. The author proposes a systematic evidence-based approach using the IOWA model to identify risk factors and develop strategies for fall prevention through stakeholder input from clinical staff and patients.
What this coursework covers
- Introduction and definition of patient falls as a hospital safety concern
- Evidence collection methodology involving clinical experts and patient perspectives across multiple departments
- Application of the IOWA model for evidence-based practice in fall prevention strategy development
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Nursing Interventions to Prevent Patient Falls
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Nursing Interventions to Prevent Patient Falls
Patient falls contribute to the largest category of hospital incidents. It refers to a sudden descent of the patient to the ground, floor, or extension of the floor with or without injury. The hospital falls and injury rates from the falls vary depending on patient risk factors, patients' population, and the presence of fall control factors (Morris & O'Riordan, 2017). A previous fall increases the chance of another fall happening. Therefore, there is a need to put in place interventions to prevent these falls. These falls affect both inpatients and outpatients in hospitals, and if left unattended, they might increase fatality rates through unprecedented accidents. Nurse practitioners have to develop interventions that will eliminate or minimize falls in hospitals.
The first step to developing the intervention is collecting evidence that will help prevent patient falls. These pieces of evidence will be gathered from clinical experts and other stakeholders (Callis, 2016). First, it is important to evaluate whether the clinical problem is worth a priority, as the subsequent paragraphs discuss. Once the problem has been marked as a priority, the next step is to gather evidence from stakeholders. The process will take six months to get the best shreds of evidence and exhaust all the possible strains of evidence to use. For clinical officers, it would give significant evidence if they are approached based on their designations.