At hospitals around the country rehab nurses are playing an essential role in reducing fall risk by educating their colleagues, in addition to their patients, according to an Advanced Healthcare Network for Nurses article.
At the Chicago-based Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital, nurses provide fall risk education to patients who also undergo a fall risk assessment at the time of admission. Schwab also uses stoplight model signs to identify the level of fall risk (green for low; yellow for moderate; and red for high) attached to patients’ beds and wheelchairs.
Additionally, rehab nurses at Schwab meet with hospital staff in other departments, including therapy, dietary, and environmental services, to educate them on the importance of notifying a nurse when a patient is at risk of falling. As a result of these efforts, Schwab has reduced their fall rate from 7.86 to 3.9 per 1,000 patient days over the course of a year.
INQRI grantees Patti Dykes and Blackford Middleton created a tool designed to prevent patient falls by translating an individual patient's fall risk assessment into a decision support intervention that communicates fall risk status, and creates a tailored plan that is accessible to care team members (including patients and family members).
The team constructed the Fall Prevention Toolkit (FPTK), and conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine whether the FPTK led to a decrease in the incidence of patient falls and a decrease in the incidence of patient falls with injury. The use of their toolkit did significantly lower the incidence of falls in the intervention units and several units wished to continue using the tool after the conclusion of the study. By establishing links between nursing fall risk assessment, risk communication and tailored interventions to prevent falls, Dykes and Middleton hope to raise awareness of fall risks for patients, nurses and other providers and to lower mortality and morbidity for potential fall victims.
Showing posts with label Blackford Middleton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blackford Middleton. Show all posts
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Friday, April 10, 2015
Special Flooring Could Reduce Fall Injuries Among Patients
Impact-absorbing flooring reduced fall injuries by nearly 60 percent in a new study of women in Swedish nursing homes, reports Reuters Health.
Researchers for the study, which is published in the journal Injury Prevention, collected fall and injury data from a nursing home in Sweden with 60 apartments. Six of the apartments were fitted with 12-millimeter flexible impact absorbing tiles.
During the three-year research period, 57 female nursing home residents participated in the study, with 39 falling at least once. Injuries resulted 30 percent of the time on regular flooring, but only 17 percent of the time with the special flooring. Although falls seemed to occur more often on the special flooring, researchers told Reuters Health that nursing home staff may have moved patients at greater risk for falling into the softer flooring areas. The study did not include bathrooms, where patients frequently fall.
INQRI grantees Patti Dykes and Blackford Middleton created a tool designed to prevent patient falls by translating an individual patient's fall risk assessment into a decision support intervention that communicates fall risk status, and creates a tailored plan that is accessible to care team members (including patients and family members).
The team constructed the Fall Prevention Toolkit (FPTK), and conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine whether the FPTK led to a decrease in the incidence of patient falls and a decrease in the incidence of patient falls with injury. The use of their toolkit did significantly lower the incidence of falls in the intervention units and several units wished to continue using the tool after the conclusion of the study. By establishing links between nursing fall risk assessment, risk communication and tailored interventions to prevent falls, Dykes and Middleton hope to raise awareness of fall risks for patients, nurses and other providers and to lower mortality and morbidity for potential fall victims.
Researchers for the study, which is published in the journal Injury Prevention, collected fall and injury data from a nursing home in Sweden with 60 apartments. Six of the apartments were fitted with 12-millimeter flexible impact absorbing tiles.
During the three-year research period, 57 female nursing home residents participated in the study, with 39 falling at least once. Injuries resulted 30 percent of the time on regular flooring, but only 17 percent of the time with the special flooring. Although falls seemed to occur more often on the special flooring, researchers told Reuters Health that nursing home staff may have moved patients at greater risk for falling into the softer flooring areas. The study did not include bathrooms, where patients frequently fall.
INQRI grantees Patti Dykes and Blackford Middleton created a tool designed to prevent patient falls by translating an individual patient's fall risk assessment into a decision support intervention that communicates fall risk status, and creates a tailored plan that is accessible to care team members (including patients and family members).
The team constructed the Fall Prevention Toolkit (FPTK), and conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine whether the FPTK led to a decrease in the incidence of patient falls and a decrease in the incidence of patient falls with injury. The use of their toolkit did significantly lower the incidence of falls in the intervention units and several units wished to continue using the tool after the conclusion of the study. By establishing links between nursing fall risk assessment, risk communication and tailored interventions to prevent falls, Dykes and Middleton hope to raise awareness of fall risks for patients, nurses and other providers and to lower mortality and morbidity for potential fall victims.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Interprofessional Teamwork Helps to Prevent Patient Falls
Nineteen hospitals in Nebraska are collaborating on an interprofessional, evidence-based approach to decreasing fall risk, reports FierceHealthcare, and they are seeing results.
"We had no process, no structures in place to decrease our fall risk," said Carol Kampschneider in a video posted on Hospitals & Health Networks (H&HN) Daily. Kampschneider is a registered nurse and vice president of clinical and regulatory services at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in West Point, Nebraska. Prior to joining the collaboration, only falls that resulted in broken bones or head injuries were identified as serious at her hospital and no fall risk assessment was completed during patient admissions.
Through an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant, the 19 hospitals became involved in the Collaboration and Proactive Teamwork Used to Reduce Falls (CAPTURE Falls) program, and began to see improvements. For example, the fall rate at St. Francis dropped from 7.31 per 1,000 patient days to 1.41 per 1,000 patient days, Kampschneider said.
As part of the program interprofessional teams collaborate and use tools to understand risks associated with inpatient falls. If a fall does occur, the teams will conduct a "post-fall huddle" to determine how they can prevent the patient from falling in the future.
INQRI grantees Patti Dykes and Blackford Middleton created a tool designed to prevent patient falls by translating an individual patient's fall risk assessment into a decision support intervention that communicates fall risk status, and creates a tailored plan that is accessible to care team members (including patients and family members).
The team constructed the Fall Prevention Toolkit (FPTK), and conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine whether the FPTK led to a decrease in the incidence of patient falls and a decrease in the incidence of patient falls with injury. The use of their toolkit did significantly lower the incidence of falls in the intervention units and several units wished to continue using the tool after the conclusion of the study. By establishing links between nursing fall risk assessment, risk communication and tailored interventions to prevent falls, Dykes and Middleton hope to raise awareness of fall risks for patients, nurses and other providers and to lower mortality and morbidity for potential fall victims.
The H&HN Daily video is available here.
"We had no process, no structures in place to decrease our fall risk," said Carol Kampschneider in a video posted on Hospitals & Health Networks (H&HN) Daily. Kampschneider is a registered nurse and vice president of clinical and regulatory services at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in West Point, Nebraska. Prior to joining the collaboration, only falls that resulted in broken bones or head injuries were identified as serious at her hospital and no fall risk assessment was completed during patient admissions.
Through an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant, the 19 hospitals became involved in the Collaboration and Proactive Teamwork Used to Reduce Falls (CAPTURE Falls) program, and began to see improvements. For example, the fall rate at St. Francis dropped from 7.31 per 1,000 patient days to 1.41 per 1,000 patient days, Kampschneider said.
As part of the program interprofessional teams collaborate and use tools to understand risks associated with inpatient falls. If a fall does occur, the teams will conduct a "post-fall huddle" to determine how they can prevent the patient from falling in the future.
INQRI grantees Patti Dykes and Blackford Middleton created a tool designed to prevent patient falls by translating an individual patient's fall risk assessment into a decision support intervention that communicates fall risk status, and creates a tailored plan that is accessible to care team members (including patients and family members).
The team constructed the Fall Prevention Toolkit (FPTK), and conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine whether the FPTK led to a decrease in the incidence of patient falls and a decrease in the incidence of patient falls with injury. The use of their toolkit did significantly lower the incidence of falls in the intervention units and several units wished to continue using the tool after the conclusion of the study. By establishing links between nursing fall risk assessment, risk communication and tailored interventions to prevent falls, Dykes and Middleton hope to raise awareness of fall risks for patients, nurses and other providers and to lower mortality and morbidity for potential fall victims.
The H&HN Daily video is available here.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Nurses Lead Fall Prevention Trials for NIH/PCORI and NC Initiatives
The National Institutes of Health and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) are launching a new study to prevent fall-related injuries that utilizes “fall care managers,” typically nurses or nurse practitioners, who will evaluate patients’ risk and create individualized plans to avoid falls, Bloomberg’s Businessweek reports.
The study will track 6,000 elderly patients at risk for falling at 80 clinics. At half of the clinics the “fall care managers” will tailor specific interventions to patients’ needs, while patients at the other 40 clinics will continue to receive standard treatment. The fall care managers will take a more custom approach to each patient, such as adjusting medication to decrease dizziness, encouraging physical therapy to improve balance, or prescribing new glasses to improve vision. Funding for the five-year trial is provided by PCORI under the Affordable Care Act.
In related news, New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina found success with a similar nurse-led approach to preventing patient falls, Fierce HealthCare reports.
New Hanover formed a patient safety services fall team to examine the underlying causes of falls and develop a system to prevent them. The team found that many patients fell while trying to reach the bathroom, because they were medicated or disoriented and had physical impairments. As a result, nurses at New Hanover now check on patients every hour and try to anticipate bathroom visits. They also administer medication at strategic times, so that patients are more likely to sleep through the night. Other preventative measures include visual markers that highlight high-risk patients and having patients sign a "fall prevention partnership" agreement with nursing staff. These and other measures led to a fall decrease of 22 percent estimated and a savings of more than $500,000, according to a New Hanover blog post.
INQRI grantees Patti Dykes and Blackford Middleton created a tool designed to prevent patient falls by translating an individual patient's fall risk assessment into a decision support intervention that communicates fall risk status, and creates a tailored plan that is accessible to care team members (including patients and family members).
The team constructed the Fall Prevention Toolkit (FPTK), and conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine whether the FPTK led to a decrease in the incidence of patient falls and a decrease in the incidence of patient falls with injury. The use of their toolkit did significantly lower the incidence of falls in the intervention units and several units wished to continue using the tool after the conclusion of the study. By establishing links between nursing fall risk assessment, risk communication and tailored interventions to prevent falls, Dykes and Middleton hope to raise awareness of fall risks for patients, nurses and other providers and to lower mortality and morbidity for potential fall victims.
The study will track 6,000 elderly patients at risk for falling at 80 clinics. At half of the clinics the “fall care managers” will tailor specific interventions to patients’ needs, while patients at the other 40 clinics will continue to receive standard treatment. The fall care managers will take a more custom approach to each patient, such as adjusting medication to decrease dizziness, encouraging physical therapy to improve balance, or prescribing new glasses to improve vision. Funding for the five-year trial is provided by PCORI under the Affordable Care Act.
In related news, New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina found success with a similar nurse-led approach to preventing patient falls, Fierce HealthCare reports.
New Hanover formed a patient safety services fall team to examine the underlying causes of falls and develop a system to prevent them. The team found that many patients fell while trying to reach the bathroom, because they were medicated or disoriented and had physical impairments. As a result, nurses at New Hanover now check on patients every hour and try to anticipate bathroom visits. They also administer medication at strategic times, so that patients are more likely to sleep through the night. Other preventative measures include visual markers that highlight high-risk patients and having patients sign a "fall prevention partnership" agreement with nursing staff. These and other measures led to a fall decrease of 22 percent estimated and a savings of more than $500,000, according to a New Hanover blog post.
INQRI grantees Patti Dykes and Blackford Middleton created a tool designed to prevent patient falls by translating an individual patient's fall risk assessment into a decision support intervention that communicates fall risk status, and creates a tailored plan that is accessible to care team members (including patients and family members).
The team constructed the Fall Prevention Toolkit (FPTK), and conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine whether the FPTK led to a decrease in the incidence of patient falls and a decrease in the incidence of patient falls with injury. The use of their toolkit did significantly lower the incidence of falls in the intervention units and several units wished to continue using the tool after the conclusion of the study. By establishing links between nursing fall risk assessment, risk communication and tailored interventions to prevent falls, Dykes and Middleton hope to raise awareness of fall risks for patients, nurses and other providers and to lower mortality and morbidity for potential fall victims.
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