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.

Funding Opportunity: NIH Pioneer Awards

NIH welcomes applications for 2014 NIH Pioneer Awards for innovative approaches to major challenges in biomedical or behavioral research.

• Up to $2.5 million in direct costs over a period of 5 years 
• Any research topic relevant to the broad mission of NIH welcome 
• Open to scientists at any career stage NIH especially encourages women and members of groups that are underrepresented in NIH-funded research to apply. 

The deadline for submitting Pioneer Award applications is October 18, 2013.

For more details: Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) RFA-RM-13-006.

Funding Opportunity: NIH: Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health

This funding opportunity announcement encourages investigators to submit research grant applications that will identify, develop, evaluate and refine effective and efficient methods, systems, infrastructures, and strategies to disseminate and implement research-tested health behavior change interventions, evidence-based prevention, early detection, diagnostic, treatment and management, and quality of life improvement services, and data monitoring and surveillance reporting tools into public health and clinical practice settings that focus on patient outcomes.

R21: Award Budget: Direct costs are limited to $275,000 over an R21 two-year period, with no more than $200,000 in direct costs allowed in any single year. Award Project Period: The total project period for an application submitted in response to this funding opportunity may not exceed two years.
Due Date(s): 16-Feb; 16-Jun; 7-May (AIDS applications)
Click here.

R01: Award Budget: Application budgets are not limited, but need to reflect actual needs of the proposed project. Award Project Period: The total project period for an application submitted in response to this funding opportunity may not exceed 5 years.
Due Date(s): 5-Feb; 5-Jun; 7-May (AIDS applications)
Click here.

R03: Award Budget: Budgets for direct costs of up to $50,000 per year and a project duration of up to two years may be requested for a maximum of $100,000 direct costs over a two-year project period. Award Project Period: The total project period for an application submitted in response to this FOA may not exceed two years.
Due Date(s): 16-Feb; 16-Jun; 7-May (AIDS applications) 
Click here.

NINR's Pat Grady Offers Teamwork Resources

At a presentation this week at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, NINR director Pat Grady spoke about "Discovery Through Delivery: The Future of Nursing Science." During the session, she stated that "interdisciplinary collaboration is the way of the future" and of course, we at the INQRI program agree.

Dr. Grady provided researchers with many resources to encourage their collaboration. Here is a sampling:

• VIVO - "an interdisciplinary national network, enabling collaboration and discovery among scientists across all disciplines."


• Collaboration and Team Science: A Field Guide - an NIH resource, published in August 2010.


• OpenCourseWare Consortium - An OpenCourseWare is "a free and open digital publication of high quality university‐level educational materials. These materials are organized as courses, and often include course planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content."

4th Annual NIH Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation: Policy and Practice

March 21-22, 2011

Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center

5701 Marinelli Road

Bethesda, MD, 20852

There is no fee to register for this conference. Please note: this year’s conference will NOT be available for viewing online.

There is a recognized need to close the gap between research evidence and clinical and public health practice and policy. How is this best accomplished? Dissemination and implementation research in health seeks to answer this question, and is gaining momentum as a field of scientific inquiry. The goal of the annual NIH Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation is to facilitate growth in the research base by providing a forum for communicating and networking about the science of dissemination and implementation.

Researchers, evaluators and implementers who are interested in identifying opportunities and strategies for overcoming obstacles for dissemination and implementation research and evaluation are encouraged to attend this meeting. The goal is to engage in dialog, exchange ideas, explore contemporary topics and challenge one another to identify and test research approaches that will advance dissemination and implementation science.

To meet the goal of the conference—to stimulate conversation among researchers and experts in the field—the conference will include Panels of scientific leaders, and include Think Tanks in addition to traditional Plenary Sessions, Concurrent Oral Presentation Sessions and Poster Sessions. Sessions will be structured to encourage interaction and networking between participants.

Applicants are encouraged to submit abstracts for oral presentations/panels, posters, and think tanks (which applicants will lead). Descriptions of each type of session, and instructions for abstract submission, are described in the Call for Proposals.

Proposal Submission Deadline: 5:00 PM Eastern Time on November 12, 2010
Conference Registration Deadline: 11:59 PM Eastern Time on February 18, 2011

Click here for the Call for Proposals.
Click here to register.