Essay on Preventing Falls and Reducing Risks in Adult Patients

This essay delves into the critical issue of fall prevention in adult patients within healthcare organizations. It begins by highlighting the severity of falls, discussing the potential physical and emotional injuries, extended hospital stays, and diminished quality of life they can cause. The essay then provides an overview of the various causes of falls, including medication side effects, physical inactivity, and inappropriate footwear. It emphasizes the need for a multidisciplinary approach involving nurses and healthcare staff, as well as the importance of continuous assessment of environmental hazards and patient-specific risk factors. The essay outlines several intervention strategies, such as medication reviews, promoting physical activity, and ensuring appropriate footwear. It also stresses the need for staff education, robust change management, and the formation of interdisciplinary teams to address fall prevention. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of policies, infrastructure improvements, and addressing staff workload and motivation to reduce the incidence of patient falls and ensure a safe environment for patients. The essay provides a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted approach required to minimize fall risks and enhance patient safety in hospitals.

Running Head: Prevention of Fall in Adult Patients
How Can The Risk Of Fall Be Reduce In Adult Patients
Essay
System04104
2/23/2020

Prevention of Fall in Adult Patients
1
How Can Risk Of Fall Be Reduce In Adult Patients
Falls in-patient can be considered as a serious cause that affects the wellbeing of patients.
Falls can be resulted in serious threats for the patient which can lead to physical and
emotional injuries and it also increases the duration of stays in hospitals. Falls in-patient can
leads to poor quality of life and it must be care by healthcare professionals during providing
treatment to patients. The essay helps to understand various causes of fall in adult patients in
a healthcare organisation. The essay also helps to assess various risk factors, which are
responsible for fall in adult patients. It has been discussed in the essay that how various
alternative approaches are available to avoid fall in-patient to ensure a better wellbeing. The
objective of this essay is to analyse various available interventions strategies to reduce the
incidents of falls in adult patients in acute care hospitals.
According to NHS hospital, 30-50% of falls resulted in some physical injuries and fractures
for patients (Hiyama and Okada, 2018). It has been also noticeable that no fall is harmless
because every falls almost leads to injury for the adult patient. However, it can be said that
multidisciplinary approach of nurses and healthcare staffs can reduce the numbers of fall
incidents in the healthcare organisations. Falls among patients in any healthcare organisation
most frequently reported and it is really a serious concern for the patient’s point of view.
Every day in the world, millions of patients fall in the healthcare organisation and it leads to
small injury to serious injury for more than 30%-50% of the adult patents. However, injured
patients do not only increase the work of nurses and healthcare staffs rather they injured
themselves in some serious manner. However, it has been found that preventing fall of patient
is really a tough challenge for the healthcare professionals. It can only be controlled or
reduced if the healthcare professionals assess the conditions in right ways. There are varieties
of toolkit, strategies can be used to reduce the fall of patients in healthcare organisation and
these strategies, and toolkit can only be applied through research and quality assessment
techniques during healthcare practices.
The successful prevention plan for reducing the number of cases of falls in healthcare
organisation needs research based risk factors that are applied in the unit of care. Rao (2010)
mentioned in his article that it is the responsibility of healthcare professional to continuously
give attention to environmental hazards for all patients and stop the number of cases relate to
patients fall. To prevent the fall incident, it is the responsibility of the healthcare
organisations and the professionals who care the patient need to prepare a complete list that

Prevention of Fall in Adult Patients
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what medications and supplements are used for health recovery of patient (Votruba, Graham,
Wisinski, and Syed, 2016). It has been observed that side effects of medications and heavy
doses of medicines are some of the major causes of patient fall in the organisation. If a
healthcare professional cares about these things and makes sure that which medicine can be
given or which medicine cannot be given to the patient, the incidents of fall in adult patients
can easily be prevented (Haines, Bennell, Osborne, and Hill, 2014). The doctor can weaning
off those medicines which can make the patient tired or effect the thinking process of the
patient must be avoided and this step of healthcare professionals can also help to reduce the
number of fall cases. A healthcare professional can note down the detailed information about
the treatment of patient and care about the feelings of patient that when and how patient feel
after the diagnosis of illness. The healthcare professionals should also consider the prior
incidents of fall and should analyse why patient is falling and adopt the prevention strategies
to avoid fall complaints of patients (Ungar, et. al., 2013).
It has been also noted that when a patient does not move his or her body, he or she can
suddenly note the incident of dis-balance in the body during standing out from his or her bed.
Physical activities can play a crucial role in prevention of fall activities (Votruba, Graham,
Wisinski, and Syed, 2016). The doctor should promote walking, water walkouts, or tai chi-
that can be good exercise for the patient and help them to make a balance of their body while
walking on the floor. However, the doctor should promote the physical activities in patients
to reduce the number of cases of fall. However, an adult patient needs to carefully adopt the
exercise program and participate in every exercise that has been suggested by the doctors to
avoid the cases of falls during diagnosis period in the hospitals. Another thing that is crucial
to understand that physical exercise during unit care not only help to reduce the number of
fall cases rather it also helps the patients to immediately recover the good health (Tzeng and
Yin, 2015). Exercise helps the patients to get the right balance of the body and strengthen the
muscle strength as well. The doctor can also suggest the patient to think about the shoes and
footwear that patient wear during the treatment. Type of footwear and shoes play a crucial
role in prevention of fall incidents in hospitals. It has been noted that high heels and floppy
sleepers of patient or slick soles of footwear are the major causes of fall in patients
(Baumhauer, et. al., 2018). In such a scenario, avoid these type of footwear can help the
patient to reduce the cases of fall. Therefore, it is essential in healthcare organisations that
healthcare professionals care about the shoes and footwear of patient and suggest them to
wear sensible shoes or footwear. It is also noticeable that sensible shoes generally reduce the

Prevention of Fall in Adult Patients
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joint pain that is also a major cause of fall in patients in healthcare organisations (Hempel, et.
al., 2013).
The awareness about the causes of fall in healthcare organisation is essential to know for
patients. In such a scenario, the healthcare professional can play a crucial role in raising
awareness among patients that how they can reduce the chances of fall (Votruba, Graham,
Wisinski, and Syed, 2016). The healthcare professional needs to spread awareness and related
information to every level of clinical and non-clinical staffs. They should be encouraged to
use safety precautions into the full continuum of patient care and education. The staff should
be educated in the way that how they can provide effective and efficient care for the patients
and how they are accountable for patient safety and security (Tzeng and Yin, 2015).
Education and motivation to the staffs can help the organisation to reduce the chances of falls
in patients and also ensure a healthy and safe life for the patients during healthcare services.
However, for this purpose the organisation needs to adopt a robust change management effort
that bring every staff of the organisation together and motivate them to work for the safety
and security of patients and reduce the number of fall cases in the organisation. Change
management is one of the ways of bringing change in the organisation that helps the staffs,
professionals to adopt new methodologies of work, thus productivity can be improved, and
safety and security of patients can be determined in the healthcare organisation (DuPree,
Fritz-Campiz and Musheno, 2014).
Prevention of patient falls in healthcare organisation is really a challenge for the healthcare
professionals (Knox, 2018). The healthcare organisation can also form an interdisciplinary
team for the prevention of injury cases that occur because of patient fall. Reducing injuries
from fall of patients can be the responsibility of everyone. It is the responsibility of every
member of the organisation such as nurses, staffs, physicians, environmental services, patient
advocacy etc. all are important for the purpose of reducing the incidents of patient fall in a
healthcare organisation (Stevens and Phelan, 2013). However, it is the responsibility of
parents and family members as well to care about the patients at home and provide them a
better environment and conditions under which chances of fall can be reduced for the
patience (DuPree, Fritz-Campiz and Musheno, 2014). The parents needs to care about the
patients and must ensure their health and wellbeing. According to a research conducted by an
international body of research, it has been found that generally healthcare policies and
interventions are effective and cost-effective in which few broad categories considered by the

Prevention of Fall in Adult Patients
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health professionals and healthcare organisations to stop the cases of patient fall in the
healthcare organisation (Parikh, 2019). The first step is to formulate policies that can
persuade a mass number of staffs about their role and responsibilities and convince how their
sincere role and efforts are necessary for the health of patients and how this effort can reduce
the chances of patient fall. Apart from this, policies and initiatives that are formulated to
provide help to those people who are admitted in hospital and suffering from any acute
disease (Callis, 2016). These steps not only help the patient to move unnecessarily outside
rather it also reduces the financial burden on the patient that patient bear due to his longer
stay in the hospitals. These approaches reduces the over dependence of patients on the nurses
and staffs who are responsible for caring about the patient safety and security
(Lapumnuaypol, et. al., 2018). The other thing that is more important to reduce the incidents
of patient fall in healthcare organisation is to expand the size or space for walking in the
organisation that will further reduce the incidents of patient fall. The organisation can also
reduce the unnecessary equipment from the campus and should remove the boxes,
newspaper, and electrical cords that spread in the organisation and create danger for the
patients (DuPree, Fritz-Campiz and Musheno, 2014). The management of the organisation
should consider the safety and security of patient first and for this purpose, the management
can also help the patient in their effort to participate in exercises, which are necessary for
physical health and avoid the incidents of patient fall. Apart from this, the hospital
administration can also focus on lighting facilities and on infrastructure, which is one of the
major causes of fall incidents in the healthcare organisations (Luzia, Almeida, and Lucena,
2014).
More than 50% of the healthcare professionals said that lack of advancement opportunities in
the healthcare organisations posed a significant challenge in providing better care for the
patients (Votruba, Graham, Wisinski, and Syed, 2016). However, more than 49% of nurses
have also accepted that lack of advancement opportunities in healthcare organisation effect
their roles and responsibilities towards the patients and affect the success against incidents of
patient fall in healthcare organisations (Pfortmueller, Lindner, and Exadaktylos, 2014).
However, the need of in-house trainings, education, and use of technology in healthcare
organisation provide the opportunity of innovation and also train staffs and nurses to deliver
quality care for the patients and ensure their security by reducing the incidents of patients fall
(Bergen, Stevens, and Burns, 2016). However, to ensure effective healthcare practice and
reduce the incidents of patient fall, it is essential to reduce the heavy workload of nurses and

Prevention of Fall in Adult Patients
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staffs thus they can pay more attention to the patient care and towards their wellbeing. It is
also considerable that proper stock of resources and equipment should be implemented in the
healthcare organisations because technology can play a crucial role in reducing the cases of
patient falls (Luzia, Almeida, and Lucena, 2014). Apart from this, management can also
focus on poor salary structure of nurses or staffs because remuneration plays a crucial role in
motivating employees. It has been found that 40% of issues related to quality care occur
because of lack of motivation and poor salary of staffs in the organisation (Kannus, et. al.,
2015). Apart from this, heavy workload is also a major responsible factor behind patient fall
in healthcare organisation. If the management of the organisation will focus on these factors,
the incidents of patient falls can be easily reduced in the healthcare organisation (Hamidi, et.
al., 2018).
Lack of staffs in healthcare organisation is also a responsible factor that leads to excessive
case of patient falls. The tension of shortage of labour forces is the major factor that can lead
to excessive patient fall cases in healthcare organisation. However, the shortage of nurses or
staffs can also affect the mentoring process, which is very essential in reducing the patient
fall cases in any healthcare organisation (Phelan, Mahoney, Voit, and Stevens, 2015). It has
been noted that 25% of healthcare organisations reported that lack of monitoring in their
healthcare organisation is the major cause of patient fall. Apart from this, it has been also
researched that mentoring nurses and staffs about their role and responsibilities reduces the
cases of patient fall (Çalbay, Çakır, and Koçak, 2018). The other thing that is essential to care
in order to reduce the number of fall cases in healthcare organisation is to motivate staffs and
healthcare nurses to spend more and more time with patients and asked them to provide
information to the patient that how they can self-reduce the chances of fall from the bed
(Milos, et. al., 2014). For educating patient and providing relevant education needs extra
effort of nurses and staffs which needed advanced training for the nurses and staffs (Spetz,
Brown and Aydin, 2015). Training can help the nurses to ensure better healthcare services to
the patients that help them to reduce the chances of patients fall during diagnosis period in
acute care unit (King, et. al., 2018). Spending time with patients is crucial for the nurses
because it helps to understand the needs and necessity of a patient and also help them to
convey their issues freely with the staffs. This will definitely help the healthcare organisation
to reduce the cases of patient fall during treatment in adult people (Ganz, et. al., 2013). It has
been seen that people who are in adult age generally avoid the help of others and wants to
move by their own as long as they recover from their health. However, poor health and lack

Prevention of Fall in Adult Patients
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of understanding of their body support causes cases of fall that leads to further injury for the
patients. However, the poor relationship of nurses or staffs with patient can also lead to the
high numbers of incidents of patient fall (Zhao, et. al., 2019). It has been observed that a
strong relationship with patient and nurses can reduce the number of patient fall cases
because a good understanding between them ensure that they understand what needs to done
during and after treatment process. The healthcare organisation needs to focus on such thing
that is very essential in prevention of patient’s fall cases and ensures a good environment for
the patient in the healthcare organisation that reduces the fall incidents for the patients (Spetz,
Brown, and Aydin, 2015).
The prevention of fall in healthcare organisation improves the service quality of healthcare
organisation and forces them to concentrate on patient safety and security during diagnosis
period. The role of nurses and staffs in a healthcare organisation is very crucial because they
play an important role in determining the wellbeing of patient (Koru, et. al., 2018). Although,
the major thing that is crucial to consider is care quality during the patient diagnosis and
treatment in the healthcare organisation. It has been observed that poor relationship of nurses
or staffs with patient can lead to the high numbers of incidents of patient fall. Therefore, it is
necessary for the nurses and healthcare professional to establish a good relationship with
patients. Apart from this, awareness about the patient need and requirements that can be
fulfilled by the patient can also help the organisation to reduce the number of fall cases
during treatment (Lim, et. al., 2018). Apart from this, it has been found during the study that
poor communication between patient and nurses or staffs can also resulted in patient fall that
has negative effect on the healthcare and wellbeing of patient. Quality care and cost effective
treatment is the most important responsibility of a healthcare organisation and if these things
are ignored by a healthcare organisation, it is really difficult to prevent the cases of falls in
adult patients. Apart from this, management can also focus on poor salary structure of nurses
because the compensation plays a crucial role in delivery of quality healthcare services and
motivates the employees. It has been found that 40% of issues related to quality care occur
because of lack of motivation and poor salary of staffs in the organisation (Christiansen et.
al., 2020).
In conclusion, the role of nurses and staffs in prevention of patient fall is very crucial because
they actually play a very significant role in monitoring the health conditions of patient. It has
been seen that poor communication between patient and nurses or staffs leads to a higher

Prevention of Fall in Adult Patients
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number of patient fall cases. In such a scenario, if the organisation enhances the skill level
and knowledge of nurses and staffs through the training and education facilities, the cases of
patient fall during diagnosis in care unit can also be reduced. However, the support and
cooperation of patient cannot be ignored because in establishing a healthy relationship with
nurses, patients are equally responsible as the nurses. However, these are some of the ways
through a healthcare organisation reduces the cases of patient’s fall incidents. However, the
role of technology cannot be ignored in such type of cases where technology can help the
nurses to monitor the conditions of patients around the clock and provide them best care
services when they needed. The monitoring process also reduces the chances of patient fall
cases during treatment. Quality care and cost effective treatment is the most important
responsibility of a healthcare organisation and if these things are ignored by a healthcare
organisation, it is really difficult to prevent the cases of falls in adult patients. However, it is
also the responsibility of a patient to support the nurses, staffs, and healthcare professional in
providing best care services that can help the patient to reduce their number of days in
hospitals and also help the patient to stay fit and healthy as quick as possible.

Prevention of Fall in Adult Patients
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Appendix
Appendices
Add this table here, label it and refer to it in the text
Database
Searched
Date
Searched
Search
Strategy Used
(Keywords,
phrases, subject
terms)
Limits
(Date
range,
language)
No.
Results
Notes
Search strategy
saved (name)?
Authors for future
searches?
Effects of
Probiotics
on
Cognition
and Fall
Risk in
Patients
With
Cirrhosis
(Google
Scholor)
26-02-2020 Key words
(Prevention of
fall in patients)
English - Parikh, N.S.
Patient
engagement
in hospital
fall
prevention
(Google
Scholor)
27-02-2020 Key words
(Prevention of
fall in patients)
English - Tzeng, H. M., and
Yin, C. Y.
Assessment
and
managemen
t of fall risk
in primary
care settings
(Google
Scholor)
26-02-2020 Key words
(Prevention of
fall in patients)
English - Phelan, E. A.,
Mahoney, J. E.,
Voit, J. C. and
Stevens, J. A.
A new 27-02-2020 Key words English - DuPree, E., Fritz-

Prevention of Fall in Adult Patients
12
approach to
preventing
falls with
injuries
(Prevention of
fall in patients)
Campiz, A. and
Musheno, D.