How answering call light on time prevent falls in the long-term setting?
Falls are prevalent in elderly patients residing in nursing homes, with approximately 1.5 falls occurring per nursing home bed-years. Although most are benign and injury-free, 10% to 25% result in hospital admission and/or fractures. Primary care providers for nursing home residents must therefore aim to reduce both the fall rate as well as the rate of fall-related morbidity in the long-term care setting. Interventions have been demonstrated to be successful in reducing falls in community-dwelling elderly patients. However, less evidence supports the efficacy of fall prevention in nursing home residents.
WE in the healthcare facility have commonly adopted call-light tracking systems, however, automatically generated call-light data, specific to staff actual response time to call lights, have not been used on a regular basis for hospital-wide and unity base quality improvement purposes (e.g., improving in-patients’ experience with nursing care and reducing injurious fall rates) (Tzeng, Hu, Yin, & Johnson, 2011; Tzeng & Yin, 2009). According to a study conducted by Tzeng and Yin (2009) it was found that when the average staff actual response time to call lights was longer, the in-patient satisfaction scores for ‘getting help as soon as possible’ and ‘having pain well controlled’ were lower and falls were avoided.
(Man Q. V, Nancy, W &Laurence Z. R, 2004), Falls in the nursing home: are they preventable?
Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/15530179/cited
Tzeng H, Grandy G, Yin C.(2013) Staff response time to call lights and unit-acquired pressure ulcer rates in adult in-patient acute care units. Contemporary Nurse: A Journal for the Australian Nursing Profession [serial online]. October 2013;45(2):182-187. Available from: CINAHL Plus with Full Text, Ipswich, MA. Accessed May 12