Reduce Fall Rate in Orthopedic Patients During Hospitalization

Tsai, PJ ； Hsu, HY ； Wang, YH

《The Proceedings of the 8th AHLA International Conference: Health Literacy in Social Resilience》 2022 (2022/12) Pp. 82-82

https://doi.org/10.30181/AHLA.202210.0053

摘要

INTRODUCTION: Falls are common in hospital settings. It causes not only physical injury but also mental health, psychological dependence and feeling of social isolation, which affect patients’ quality of life and healthcare service; therefore, nurse staff need to spend more time in caring for patients and tend to suffer from higher stress.
OBJECTIVES: Fall results in different degree of severity of damage. However, the reasons of fall are complex, meaning that the incidence of fall rarely has single cause or risk factor. The use of intervention should be based on the root causes of problem. The aim of this study was to reduce fall rate in orthopedic patients during hospitalization from 0.10% to 0.05%.
METHODS: According to the causes analysis, the strategies were “staff and patients education”, “caregiver education”, “environment safety”, and “equipment inspection” as following: 1. Fall prevention equipment must be routinely inspected and well-maintained, such as hospital bed, bedside chair, commode chair and walker. 2. Patients should use seatbelt properly while toileting or showering. To ensure patient safety, caregivers should stand directly in front of patients who need assistance. 3. Caregivers and patients scan the QR code to watch the Fall Prevention educational video. Then nurses use teach-back method with patients and families and communicate with nurses on the next shift. 4. Nurses should assess key caregiver’s knowledge and skills regarding fall prevention and patient's muscle strength every 8-hour shift.
Results: The fall rate was reduced from 0.10% to 0.149%. The education time related to fall prevention, walking aid, and wheelchair increased to 58.43%, 30.5% and 35.55%.
CONCLUSION: Fall prevention rely on multiple interventions. Creating multilingual video QR code, individualized education related to fall prevention, optimized Handover communication and team work can play a positive role in reducing fall rate.