Clinical Practice Improvement Project Report on Accidental Fall Prevention among Older Adults

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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NURSING
NURS2006 ASSIGNMENT 5
Clinical Practice Improvement Project Report
Student Name, FAN and ID:
Project Title:
To educate the nursing professionals about the importance of accidental fall prevention
among the older adults and train the nursing professional under the presence of occupational
therapists in order to reduce the chances of fall among the older adults in residential care and
under hospital care settings.
PICO Format
1. Population: Nursing professionals
2. Intervention: Older adults fall prevention education and strategies
3. Context: Residential care or aged care or hospital care settings for the older adults
4. Outcome: Decrease in the tendency of accidental fall among the older adults and thereby
improving their quality of life
Project Aim:
The aim of the project is to educate and provide training (Interventions)to the nursing
professionals who are working under residential care and aged care settings about the
strategies of older adults fall prevention for a tenure of 1 week (Time) in order to reduce the
incidences of accidental falls(Measurable).
Relevance of Clinical Governance to your project
The four pillars of clinical governance include clinical effectiveness, clinical risk
management, patient’s experience and professional development (Australian Government
Department of Health, 2012). Here, risk management, coincides, with the scope of this
project. The reason behind this is, the project aims to show how education and training of the
nurses about the strategies of the accidental fall prevention of older adults helps to reduce the
risk of fall in older adults. According to Vlaeyen et al. (2015), educating the nurses about the
strategies of fall prevention helps to reduce the chances of recurrent fall among the older
adults who suffer from gait problems, visual impairments, neuronal complications or other

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healthcare problems. Vlaeyen et al. (2015) further highlighted that proper training of the
nursing professionals about the interventions of the fall prevention must be provided under
the presence of occupational therapist. This will help to increase in knowledge of the nursing
professionals, operating in the residential ward to perform proper risk assessment of the older
adults who are above 65 years of age and accordingly implement the interventions to prevent
the chances of accidental falls. The presence of occupational therapists further helps in better
risk management (Vlaeyen et al., 2015).
Evidence that the issue / problem is worth solving:
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2017) on an annual basis nearly
1014 elderly people over 65 years of age lose their life due to accidental fall under residential
or aged care settings in Australia. This accidental fall among the older adults also results in
injury-related hospitalization among this age group. The statistics published by Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare (2012), mentions the fall incidence ratio among male and
female is 1:3. Women who are aged 65 years and above are 2.8 times more vulnerable than
older men in encountering accidental fall due to gait problems or slippage. According to
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2012), in order to reduce the chances of fall
among the older adults,
(i) It is important to generate a low-risk population and thereby promoting independence
(ii) improvement of the outcomes through facilitating local partnerships
(iii) Creating safer environment for the older adults
(iv) Increasing the capacity of the healthcare workers towards preventing fall and fall-
associated injury among the older adults
(v) Proper development and management through research, information dissemination and
training.
The main project is based on the point highlights under (iii), (iv) and (v).
The review of the literature highlighted that one of the effective strategies for improvement of
the fall prevention among the older adults was providing proper training to the healthcare
professionals especially the nurses to improve the compliance of the preventive strategy
towards fall prevention (Stephenson et al., 2015). The systematic review conducted by
Sherrington et al. (2017) showed that exercise can be regarded as a single intervention for the
prevention of fall among the community dwelling older people. In order to increase the