Advisory Committee Chair
Curry Bordelon
Advisory Committee Members
Ashley Hodges
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2023
Degree Name by School
Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) School of Nursing
Abstract
This manuscript is designed to promote and improve healthcare safety, quality, efficiency, and lower medical costs for hospitals and patients. Falls, fall injuries, and their devastating consequences are rising, yet falls are preventable even among senior patients. Search Engines and Key Terms SciWheel was used to save the literature and eliminate duplications. Key terms were used in the Boolean strings: elderly fall prevention, senior fall safety, in-hospital fall prevention, falls in the aging, and fall prevention tools. The CINAHL Plus yielded 58. PubMed search yielded 121. And Google Scholar yielded 32. The total of all three searches was 211. Thirteen duplicates were eliminated by SciWheel, leaving 198 articles. Excluded were 168 articles about machines, articles about patients less than 65 years old, and articles not about hospital patients, leaving 30 articles. SQUIRE 2.0 was used in organizing this manuscript (Ogrinc et al., 2016). Falls are America's leading cause of injury among the elderly, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (2020). Falls, fall injuries, and their devastating consequences are rising, yet falls are preventable events (Alamgir, Muazzam, & Nasrullah, 2011). Annually, there are seven hundred thousand to a million falls in U.S. hospitals that cause pain, suffering, deaths, and enormous healthcare cost. ( Johnston & Magnan, 2019). Decreased balance can lead to falls that produce in-hospital patient pain, suffering, disability, increased mortality, and morbidity (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2020). The combined direct and indirect cost of fall injuries in 2010 among the elderly was an overwhelming $50 billion and is expected to increase substantially by 2040 (Lohman et al., 2017). A significant portion of these spiraling upward costs was shared by local hospitals and patients. 3 Joint Commission (2015) stated that lack of adherence to hospital-approved fall risk prevention protocols was a main contributor to causing hospital patient falls. The Shift Change Fall Safety Checklist was designed to reduce this problem (Johnston & Magnan, 2019). In some cases, it can also help improve communication by addressing the hearing and vision needs of the patients.
Recommended Citation
Brooks, Janice Isaac, "Increasing Patient Safety by Reducing Falls Among In-Hospital Community-Dwelling Patients 65 Years Old or Older by Using a Shift Change Fall Safety Checklist" (2023). All ETDs from UAB. 467.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/467