Assignment:
Respond to the discussion post below using APA as a reference for structure and references less than 5 years old.
During my clinical experience, one patient safety risk that I observed was patient falls. Patient fall risk is one of the biggest safety risks in the clinical setting. There are many precautions and safety measures to prevent falls, yet they can still happen. Safety measures such as bed alarms, fall risk assessments, and assistive devices are utilized to help limit the risk of falls. "Hospital falls remain a problem worldwide, despite sustained falls prevention efforts"(Morris et al., 2022). This issue is a significant concern for patient outcomes because it can cause injury, delay discharge, and further diminish the patient's condition. One nursing intervention to prevent falls is to ensure the patient's bed is in the lowest position and the bed alarm is on. This will allow the nurse to be notified of the patient's movement in bed, as well as limiting the distance to the floor during a possible fall from the bed. Another nursing intervention to prevent falls is to encourage the use of assistive devices. This includes ensuring assistive devices are within the patient's reach, educating the patient on the assistive device, and ensuring that the room is free of clutter. This intervention will allow the patient to ambulate steadily in a safe environment. According to an article from Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, interventions to prevent patient falls include: multifactorial interventions, patient education, body exercise, medical devices, medication review, and complementary interventions such as olfactory stimulation (Schroberer et al., 2022). Another way the healthcare team can limit and prevent patient falls is to promote a culture of safety. This can be accomplished by encouraging staff members to check bed alarms during shift change, assessment, and during regular rounds. Staff members should also make sure that each patient has the correct fall-risk equipment/supplies in the room during rounds. This includes gait belts, walkers, non-slip socks, fall-risk signage, and bracelets. During handoff, staff members must communicate about ambulation and the patient's mobility. This is an important part of promoting safety in the hospital setting. Need Assignment Help?
References:
Schoberer, D., Breimaier, H.E., Zuschnegg, J., Findling, T., Schaffer, S. & Archan, T, the Guideline Development Group (2022) Fall prevention in hospitals and nursing homes: Clinical practice guideline. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 19, 86-93.
Morris, M. E., Webster, K., Jones, C., Hill, A.-M., Haines, T., McPhail, S., Kiegaldie, D., Slade, S., Jazayeri, D., Heng, H., Shorr, R., Carey, L., Barker, A., & Cameron, I. (2022). Interventions to reduce falls in hospitals: A systematic review and meta-analysis.