Preventing Fall-Related Injuries in Hospital Settings: An Annotated Bibliography

Running head: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Annotated Bibliography
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
In recent times, the fall related injuries in the hospital settings are very common. Therefore, an
injury due to fall in the hospital settings are directly altering the patient’s safety. Generally the
frail patients and elderly people in the hospital settings are more vulnerable to the fall related
injury in a hospital settings. However, these two groups are not only in the vulnerable group, but
it is observed, patients of any age group can have the fall related injury in a hospital setting. The
fall related injury among the young adults are observed due to the physiological changes various
surgeries, medications, medical conditions and due to these conditions the patients become very
weak and as a result they may have a fall. In US, it is observed that, every year almost 100
patients out of 1000 patients have fall in a hospital settings and among them 30-40% have
injuries due to their fall. As a result, the average hospital staying is enhanced for them and it will
increase the treatment cost as well. It is observed that an average cost of fall injury treatment in
US is almost $14000 (Alert, 2015). In order to prevent such fall and related injuries several
measures can be taken and in this essay a few practices of addressing this problem is discussed
through annotated bibliography.
Barker, A. L., Morello, R. T., Wolfe, R., Brand, C. A., Haines, T. P., Hill, K. D., ... &
Sherrington, C. (2016). 6-PACK programme to decrease fall injuries in acute hospitals:
cluster randomised controlled trial. bmj, 352, h6781.
The study of Barker et al. (2018) discusses one of the best techniques of fall injury prevention in
the hospital setting. In this study, the evaluation of effectiveness of this technique in decreasing
fall injury in the hospital wards is discussed. The 6-Pack program refers to a nurse-led targeted
multifactorial fall prevention program and it is specifically designed for the acute hospital
settings. In this study, the authors used randomized controlled trial and the study was conducted
in 24 wards in six Australian hospitals. Before starting the 6-PACK program data was collected

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
for a there months period in order to make a baseline data and it will allow the researcher to
compare the pre and post intervention data. The patient’s data was analyzed as per the occupied
bed days by the patients. In this study almost 46245 admitted patients were included and study
continued from January 2012 to March 2013. However, in the study it was observed that almost
31411 patients were more than one time in the hospital wards. The intervention technique that is
6-PACK technique, was used more in the intervention wards. Therefore, it was noted that,
positive outcomes were recorded due to the use of the intervention. The large sample size and
randomized controlled sampling techniques enhances the reliability of the study. On the other
hand, the participants’ hospitals cannot depict the whole scenario at all. Use of multiple data set
can also be depicted as another limitation of this study.
Singh, I., & Okeke, J. (2016). Reducing inpatient falls in a 100% single room elderly care
environment: evaluation of the impact of a systematic nurse training programme on falls
risk assessment (FRA). BMJ Open Quality, 5(1), u210921-w4741.
The study of Singh & Okeke (2016) discusses the role of education and training of the nurses
and other staffs in the hospital settings and it was observed that, this method can be an effective
one in addressing this problem of patient’s fall injury. This study also assess the outcome as per
the incidence of falls that is expressed as a rate per 1000 bed days of the patients. The project
team of this study, used a Plan-Do-Study- Act (PDSA) in order to test the effectiveness of the
interventions. In this study, almost 9445 patients was enrolled as subject patients in a time period
of almost 3 years. In this time period, almost 2349 fall incidents were reported and almost 1046
patients were affected by injury. The pre and post intervention data of the patients showed a
significant reduction of the 30-days post-discharge among the patients. The results showed that,
the use of training program, has become successful in reducing fall incidents and the almost 1241