Adult Inpatient Falls Case Study

Retrospective Case Reviews of Adult Inpatient Falls in the Acute Care Setting
Cindy Lenh
Los Angeles City College

Retrospective Case Reviews of Adult Inpatient Falls in the Acute Care Setting
Getting older and older is process of our life Spain. No one can stop the aging process. As we become older, our muscle and skeletal become weakness that can lead to many injuries. The most serious injuries and happen a lot in old aged even in hospital is risk for fall. Risk for fall is one the common diagnose for hospitalized older adults and it is also the most important practice for nurse in acute care setting. Higher fall rates are reported among older adults and patients with neurological diagnose an in the rehabilitation setting. Fall predominantly

The second element was all falls happen when patient try to go bathroom and use bedside commode independently. These findings were also matched with report done by Johnson, George and Tran (2011) that 77 % of nearly 600 hospital falls in Australia were not witnessed and one third of falls occurred in bathroom. This study also pointed out the two common patient behaviors that can lead a patient to fail. The believes that he or she is capable of going to the bathroom independently is the first point. Second was the conscious decision trying get up without assistance and following appropriate instructions or procedures. When review case, they found out that in all patients in six cases tried going to bathroom without assistance; one patient chose to ambulate without their walker, one patient called for assistance but took the action before nurse arriving, one patient tripped over the medical devices when he was in isolation room that was not located close to the nurse’s

These interventions included educating patients consistently about the important of getting assistance to get out of bed and go bathroom, providing information to increase patient knowledge about fall precaution, the reason why he or she was risk for falls and what specific actions they should avoid. The most important that, the nurse should to let the patient know that calling for help is not a bother to the nurse. They also found out that fall risk assessment, fall prevention, closer supervision of patient and hourly rounding were not performed or done as its policies. The findings in case reviews suggested that despite use of multiple fall prevention intervention, all falls are not preventable, but they also highlighted the need for consistent implementation of fall prevention intervention. In current evidence based fall prevention intervention recommendation, they mentioned a multicomponent approach to fall prevention can reduce fall rates by 30% (Miake-Lye et al., 2013). They also suggested nurse when doing implement fall prevention should aware of sedating medication, increase restraint application and reduced efforts to mobilized if necessary for patient safety. All nurse should remember that fall prevention intervention will reduce falls but they are not likely prevent all