Nursing Assignment 2022

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1NURSING
Adverse events related to falls, pressure ulcers and malnutrition are a major issue in
clinical settings like nursing home facilities. The incidence of fall is particularly common in
older people and factors like gait problem, cognitive impairment and sedating medication predict
the risk of fall in elderly patient. The statistics related to fall related injuries in the United States
shows that increased by 31% to rate of deaths due to fall in elderly between the year 2007 to
2016 and the fasted growing rate was for people above the age of 85 years (Burns & Kakara,
2018). The investigation regarding proportion of patients affected by adverse events in hospitals
in 27 countries across the world reveals that at least 10% of patients are affected by at least one
adverse events and the common cause behind such events mainly included surgical, medication
or fluid related and health care associated infection related causes (Schwendimann et al., 2018).
Hence, in response to such issues in hospital setting, the PICO question is ‘Does risk assessment
(I) influence the rate of adverse events (O) among nursing home residents (P) compared with no
risk assessment (C)?’.
One research study that is found relevant to the PICO question is the paper by Lannering
et al. (2016) which investigated about the most important risk assessment elements that is
necessary to prevent adverse events in nursing home residents. The study is relevant to the PICO
question as it specifies the important factors that need to be included in risk assessment process
to prevent falls. Some interest findings that the article presented was that risks related to falls,
malnutrition and pressure ulcers were common in nursing home residents and the risk assessment
tools related to mobility was found to be the most important. In the context of adverse events
related to falls and pressures, assessment items concerning mobility and activity was found to be
the most important to predict fall risk. The study justified that immobility is a critical risk
elements for patient that result in common care problems such as falls and pressure ulcers. The

2NURSING
relevance of the findings for nursing practice is that while conducting risk assessment for
patients, the nurse should focus on mobility and activity related factors as fall related injuries are
most common in clinical setting.
Reliability is an important criterion in research papers that gives idea about the extent to
which research gives consistent and trustworthy outcomes. In quantitative studies, reliability is a
measure of consistency and it is based on attributes of homogeneity, stability and equivalence
(Heale & Twycross, 2015). While reviewing the reliability of the quantitative paper by
Lannering et al. (2016), the data was collected with the use of fall risk tool called DFRI which
included 11 risk items. Similarly different risk items were used for assessment of risk of
malnutrition and pressure ulcers. The reliability of the instruments used is understood from
calculating the internal consistency of each scale. The paper measured internal consistency for
each tool by Cronbach’s alpha. The Cronbach’s alpha for DFRI was 0.5, 0.66 for MNS and 0.45
for MNA-SF indicating a moderate score. This implies that the tools taken for data collection
does not have strong reliability. Hence, such limitation affects the application of the research
outcomes for high risk population group.
Validity of a research study is defined as the degree to which research variables are
accurately measured and reported in a research paper. This can be examined by evaluation of
content validity, construct validity and criterion validity (Heale & Twycross, 2015). This means
the manner in which key concepts has been examined. The study mainly focused on examining
the factors of falls, weight-loss and pressure ulcers and the examination of these three factors is
critical in the context of adverse events is appropriate. Hence, it can be said the research
outcomes are valid as it examined the most common cause of adverse events. Fall is the most
common cause of falls and assessment regarding the risk factors contributing to falls can help to