Introduction
Today, patient falls is an occurrence that frequently lead to many complications in healthcare facilities. Although not all falls are harmful, some of them cause severe injury while others result into death. Patient falls is a serious concern especially after a consideration that patients come for help by medical practitioners, thus, additional body harm through falls is an adversity to their physical and psychological wellbeing. As we put in a lot of effort to minimize patient falls, we seek to answer a critical question, “what are the best evidence based approaches that the management can install to reduce the patient fall frequency within the healthcare facility?” This project aims to improve the quality of services within the hospital setting. The project focuses on challenges that cause patient falls, analysis of these causes, and addressing them using the best possible evidence-based intervention.
Evaluation of the Current Condition
This research has analyzed the current state in the hospital. An officer had placed a notice on doors for all patients that seem to be at high risk for a fall. The officer did that after getting a fall victim from the previous shift. It was unfortunate that those in the care section had no idea that there was a new notice on the door. Also, the team does not understand this inter-shift communication, and information flow from the nurses to their assistants. This mix has necessitated that the care department is up to determine the best mechanisms that can prevent patient falls in the inpatient sections. Falls in the inpatient sections occur possibly as a result of five key agents: fellow human beings, environmental aspects, materials and equipment. In most cases, people tend to blame those nearby a fallen patient. It is good to know that sometimes it occurs due to errors from an incompetent nurse, staff complications, poor hand-offs between officers on duty, inadequate support from other officers, lack of proper risk management practices or improper assessment of strategies that could avert the fall.
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There are other inherent physiological conditions that can cause a fall. Such aspects include; poor eyesight, impairment in the cognitive functioning, and impaired mobility. Another critical cause is the environmental state in the fall surroundings. Other causes include poor room organization, poor storage systems, inadequate lighting, washrooms that are far away from nursing rooms, dangerous working conditions like spills or slippery food remains on the floor, and room designs that do not comply to standards. In some cases, materials contribute a significant percentage towards falls. The surface patterns on floors create false impressions hence a person may think his steps will cause them trouble. We may also find unsafe materials such as shoes that lack anti-slip gadgets and those with extremely high heels.
Most people attribute falls to errors in the assessment technique and grade fall risks. These errors include inadequate or lack of communication on fall risks, poor assessment of fall risks, and inadequate safety guidelines that prevent falling. While considering approaches to fall prevention in a hospital, the most critical predictors are fall assessment and communication. Lack of or inappropriate application of monitoring techniques like hourly rounds or sounding bells (alarms) are likely to raise risks associated with falls. Finally, we can also blame equipment for some fall cases. Some officials do not apply safety modes on the equipment, or they inappropriately handle them. Some equipment do not have enough fall-protection gadgets while others fail to function normally in the middle of the operation. Beds and chairs meant for patients ought to have alarms. Some do not have these safety gadgets, while others are smaller to accommodate the patient.
SWOT Analysis related to the quality improvement process.
Strengths
Weaknesses