Titler’s work focuses on improving care for older adults in areas such as pain management, cancer care, heart failure, and fall prevention. Her INQRI-funded research with Gary Rosenthal investigated links between level of professional nursing practice and adoption of evidence-base practices, fall prevalence, and injury from falls. The study was titled: “Impact of System-Centered Factors, and Processes of Nursing Care on Fall Prevalence and Injuries from Falls.”
Showing posts with label fall prevention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fall prevention. Show all posts
Friday, October 30, 2015
Former INQRI Grantee Elected to National Academy of Medicine
Marita Titler, a professor and chair of the Department of Systems, Populations, and Leadership at the University of Michigan, School of Nursing, has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Medicine.
Titler’s work focuses on improving care for older adults in areas such as pain management, cancer care, heart failure, and fall prevention. Her INQRI-funded research with Gary Rosenthal investigated links between level of professional nursing practice and adoption of evidence-base practices, fall prevalence, and injury from falls. The study was titled: “Impact of System-Centered Factors, and Processes of Nursing Care on Fall Prevalence and Injuries from Falls.”
Titler’s work focuses on improving care for older adults in areas such as pain management, cancer care, heart failure, and fall prevention. Her INQRI-funded research with Gary Rosenthal investigated links between level of professional nursing practice and adoption of evidence-base practices, fall prevalence, and injury from falls. The study was titled: “Impact of System-Centered Factors, and Processes of Nursing Care on Fall Prevalence and Injuries from Falls.”
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Rehab Nurses Lead Multidisciplinary Efforts in Fall Prevention
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.
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.
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.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Hypertension Medication May Lead to Increased Risk of Fall-Related Injuries
Patients taking medication to treat high blood pressure may be at an increased risk of serious injury from falling, including hip fractures and head injuries. This risk is particularly high for older patients who have been injured in previous falls, according to a new study by Mary E. Tinetti of the Yale School of Medicine, covered on Nurse.com.
The study examined the association between blood pressure medication use and serious injury from a fall in nearly 5,000 patients over the age of 70. During a three-year period, nine percent of patients studied had serious fall-related injuries. The risk of serious injury was up to 40 percent higher for patients who used blood pressure medication. Additionally, the risk was more than twice as high for patients who had a previous fall-related injury.
One of the key lessons learned is that to prevent injuries, clinicians should pay greater attention to fall risk for older adults with hypertension, particularly those with a previous injury, researchers said.
The study abstract is available at: http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1832197.
INQRI grantee Patti Dykes worked with a team to develop the Falls: Tailoring Interventions for Patient Safety (Falls TIPS) online tool kit to educate patients and families about how they can work with nurses and other providers to prevent falls. The toolkit was developed based on the Fall TIP: Validation of Icons to Communicate Fall Risk Status and Tailored Interventions to Prevent Patient Falls study, which involved developing and validating a set of icons designed to communicate fall risk status, and developing tailored interventions to prevent patient falls in hospitals.
The study examined the association between blood pressure medication use and serious injury from a fall in nearly 5,000 patients over the age of 70. During a three-year period, nine percent of patients studied had serious fall-related injuries. The risk of serious injury was up to 40 percent higher for patients who used blood pressure medication. Additionally, the risk was more than twice as high for patients who had a previous fall-related injury.
One of the key lessons learned is that to prevent injuries, clinicians should pay greater attention to fall risk for older adults with hypertension, particularly those with a previous injury, researchers said.
The study abstract is available at: http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1832197.
INQRI grantee Patti Dykes worked with a team to develop the Falls: Tailoring Interventions for Patient Safety (Falls TIPS) online tool kit to educate patients and families about how they can work with nurses and other providers to prevent falls. The toolkit was developed based on the Fall TIP: Validation of Icons to Communicate Fall Risk Status and Tailored Interventions to Prevent Patient Falls study, which involved developing and validating a set of icons designed to communicate fall risk status, and developing tailored interventions to prevent patient falls in hospitals.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Evidence to Improve the Quality of Care
This post originally appeared on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Human Capital Blog.
Richard Kronick, Ph.D., was named director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in August 2013. Dr. Kronick is a health policy researcher with a background in academia as well as in Federal and State government. He received an RWJF Investigator Award in Health Policy Research in 1998.Human Capital Blog (HCB): Congratulations on your new position at AHRQ. This is an exciting time for health care. What do you see as AHRQ’s place in the U.S. health care universe?
Richard Kronick: Thank you! You’re right—this is an exciting time.
We have an almost $3 trillion health care system. We pour tremendous resources into the delivery of medical care—but comparatively little effort into trying to understand how health care can be delivered more safely, with higher quality, and be more accessible and affordable. AHRQ’s role is to produce evidence that can be used to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable, and affordable, and to work with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other partners to make sure that the evidence is understood and used.
HCB: What is your agenda and what are your priorities for AHRQ?
Kronick: We have four priorities. The first is dissemination and implementation of patient-centered outcomes research. One way we’ll be doing this is to support small- and medium-sized primary care practices to help build their ability to use PCOR findings. In particular, we want to support practices in improving their patients’ outcomes on cardiovascular risk factors, the so-called ABCS (aspirin, blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking), and more broadly to help practices adopt PCOR findings as they emerge. In addition, we are interested in knowing if and how this type of support can help practices achieve those goals so future Agency PCOR dissemination initiatives might draw on the lessons learned.
The second priority is to produce evidence that will make health care safer. AHRQ’s work has already had a substantial impact here. For instance, in one project, our work has contributed to an approximately 40 percent reduction in central line-associated bloodstream infections in a broad set of hospitals. The same intervention has led to an approximately 20 percent reduction in catheter-associated urinary tract infections so far in the project, although these are preliminary numbers. We will be extending this work to surgical site infections and ventilator acquired pneumonia, as well as working on reducing harm from other adverse events—particularly reducing falls, pressure ulcers, and harms from obstetric care.
Our third priority is to produce evidence to make health care more accessible. Chiefly we will do this by evaluating the effects of the Medicaid and marketplace coverage expansions under the Affordable Care Act, with a focus on producing the evidence that decision makers will need to increase access in the future.
Our fourth priority is to produce evidence that will increase the affordability of health care. One way we will do this is by working with states to increase the transparency of health care prices—to improve data, measures, and public reporting strategies so consumers can understand the price of services as well as their quality. We will also work on producing information to compare the resources and quality of care produced by health care systems within the United States.
HCB: How would you characterize the quality of care in the United States today?
Kronick: I would characterize it as uneven. In some areas we do very well, but in some we do not. Only about 50 percent of patients with high blood pressure have it controlled, and many people with high cholesterol are not working with members of their health care team on making progress. There’s too much variation, across regions and across providers, without adequate effort to understand the effects of different methods of delivering care on health outcomes.
HCB: What are some of the barriers to improving quality? How can AHRQ help us overcome these barriers?
Kronick: The first barrier is access. There are millions of people who currently don’t have health insurance—and the evidence is clear that they receive lower quality care than those who do have insurance.
And, of course, there are tremendous disparities in health care quality by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, as AHRQ documents each year in our National Healthcare Quality Report and National Healthcare Disparities Report.
A third barrier is that our incentives for providing high-quality care aren’t very mature yet. Although we’ve learned a lot recently, it’s still very difficult to measure what it is we want providers to do. We struggle to develop accountability mechanisms that will reward quality.
I should point out that many of these quality problems are endemic throughout the world. They’re not unique to the United States—but some of them are magnified in the United States. This is particularly true with fragmentation. In many places in the United States, providers don’t talk much with each other, care is not well coordinated, and patients can fall through the cracks.
The key to overcoming these barriers is to understand how access to the system can be improved. That’s one thing that AHRQ can do: we can produce evidence to help providers, patients, and policy makers understand how to improve access to care.
HCB: You won a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research in 1998, and were a professor at the University of California at San Diego. In academia, you focused on whether and how markets can be made to work well in health care, particularly for vulnerable populations. Will you tackle this issue at AHRQ?
Kronick: Yes. And, as an aside, the RWJF award was among very important opportunities for me to expand my thinking on these issues. But, our health care system remains a market-based system, and that’s not changing. So the challenge we face is to make the market work as well as it can for as many Americans as possible, including the ones who have limited access.
That’s where our third and fourth priorities—concerning access and affordability—will be important. Understanding the effects of coverage expansion means paying attention to the effects of competition between insurers and between providers at the local level. At AHRQ we will be very focused on producing evidence needed by the Secretary of HHS and by members of Congress going forward.
For instance, with the coverage expansion, how much will utilization increase? I’m pretty confident utilization will increase, but less confident by how much. When the State of Oregon embarked on its coverage expansion, the thinking was that use of outpatient services might increase by 80 percent or even double, but the reality was closer to 35 percent. These are the things we need to understand on a national scale as we increase coverage, because the Affordable Care Act won’t be static. We’ve already seen some changes in it, and I anticipate we may see more changes as we understand its effects more fully. This is the kind of information that the Secretary and the Congress will demand.
HCB: Is there upcoming AHRQ research that you expect will have a significant impact?
Kronick: We do have some research that should get some well-deserved attention. For instance, we will have a study coming out early in 2014 about the effect of patient safety improvements in reducing adverse events in treatment of certain conditions.
We’ll also release some work on CUSP for catheter-associated urinary tract infections. CUSP has been a very important program, and we are looking at ways to extend it beyond healthcare-associated infections to other patient safety problems.
Monday, December 16, 2013
Indiana Program Illustrates Potential of Nurse-Led Initiatives
A series of nurse-led initiatives in Indiana improved patient outcomes and is projected to save health care organizations in the state more than $5.2 million. These results demonstrate the importance of increasing nurses’ leadership opportunities, a key recommendation of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) landmark “Future of Nursing” report.
The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) launched the Clinical Scene Investigator (CSI) Academy last year as a team-oriented and hands-on educational experience that placed nurses as clinician leaders. The nurses led initiatives and generated quantifiable improvements in the quality of patient care and hospital finances. Nurse-led initiatives studied in the program helped to:
Media coverage of the AACN findings included Infection Control Today, Nurse.com and Advanced Healthcare Network for Nurses.
INQRI-funded research has focused on nurse-led initiatives in many of these areas, including patient falls, central line-associated bloodstream infections and pressure ulcers.
The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) launched the Clinical Scene Investigator (CSI) Academy last year as a team-oriented and hands-on educational experience that placed nurses as clinician leaders. The nurses led initiatives and generated quantifiable improvements in the quality of patient care and hospital finances. Nurse-led initiatives studied in the program helped to:
- Improve patient satisfaction by as much as 20 percent;
- Reduce stays in the pediatric intensive care unit (ICU) by 0.5 days;
- Cut incidences of patient falls and hospital-acquired device-related nose and mouth pressure ulcers by more than 50 percent;
- Decrease overall pressure ulcers by more than 60 percent; and
- Drop mechanical ventilation days for ICU patients by 0.44 days.
Media coverage of the AACN findings included Infection Control Today, Nurse.com and Advanced Healthcare Network for Nurses.
INQRI-funded research has focused on nurse-led initiatives in many of these areas, including patient falls, central line-associated bloodstream infections and pressure ulcers.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Higher Risk of Head Injuries Due to Falls Among Elderly in Long-Term Care
Seniors who fall while in long-term care facilities are at high risk for traumatic brain injuries, with nearly 40 percent of those who fall striking their heads, according to a study published in the October 7th Canadian Medical Association Journal. Of 227 falls reported at two long-term care facilities in the British Columbia province of Canada from April 2007-June 2010, more than a third (37 percent) involved residents hitting their heads. Twenty out of 59 falls with head impact resulted in a report of head injury.
The study shows that direction of a fall and landing position were significantly associated with likelihood of head impact. When falling, patients tended to twist backward, lowering the risk of head impact. Participants trying to use their hands to stop falls did not significantly lower the likelihood of head impact. To reduce the risk of head injuries, the researchers suggest improved screening for fall risk factors, improved facility design and flooring, and better fall prevention programs, Nurse.com reports.
INQRI grantee Patti Dykes worked with a team to develop the Falls: Tailoring Interventions for Patient Safety (Falls TIPS) online tool kit to educate patients and families about how they can work with nurses and other providers to prevent falls. The toolkit was developed based on the Fall TIP: Validation of Icons to Communicate Fall Risk Status and Tailored Interventions to Prevent Patient Falls study, which involved developing and validating a set of icons designed to communicate fall risk status, and developing tailored interventions to prevent patient falls in hospitals.
The study shows that direction of a fall and landing position were significantly associated with likelihood of head impact. When falling, patients tended to twist backward, lowering the risk of head impact. Participants trying to use their hands to stop falls did not significantly lower the likelihood of head impact. To reduce the risk of head injuries, the researchers suggest improved screening for fall risk factors, improved facility design and flooring, and better fall prevention programs, Nurse.com reports.
INQRI grantee Patti Dykes worked with a team to develop the Falls: Tailoring Interventions for Patient Safety (Falls TIPS) online tool kit to educate patients and families about how they can work with nurses and other providers to prevent falls. The toolkit was developed based on the Fall TIP: Validation of Icons to Communicate Fall Risk Status and Tailored Interventions to Prevent Patient Falls study, which involved developing and validating a set of icons designed to communicate fall risk status, and developing tailored interventions to prevent patient falls in hospitals.
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