Date of Award

Summer 7-31-2021

Document Type

Scholarly Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

First Advisor

Camille Payne, PhD, RN

Second Advisor

Sabrina Koog, DNP, RN

Abstract

Practice Problem: Falls are among the most reported hospital-acquired conditions and can lead to severe injuries, increased length of hospital stays, pain, distress, and emotional trauma in the elderly. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) identifies falls as preventable and no longer authorizes reimbursement to healthcare systems for treating inpatient fall-related injuries.

PICOT: The PICOT question that guided this project was: In adult, acute care patients admitted to the telemetry unit (P), how does implementing evidence-based multimodal fall prevention strategies (I) compared to routine fall prevention strategies (C) affect inpatient fall rate (O) over a period of 6-8 weeks (T)?

Evidence: The literature review revealed that using multimodal risk prevention strategies effectively reduces fall risk and fall-related injuries and thus improves patient safety and outcomes.

Intervention: A multimodal fall prevention strategy was developed, according to the Morse Fall Risk Assessment score, utilizing tools such as bed alarm on, lights on, a urinal within reach, purposeful hourly rounding, and bedside reporting during shift change. The oncoming shift nurse checked with the off-going shift nurse at the patient’s bedside to ensure that the fall risk patients’ fall precaution strategies had been initiated and maintained throughout the shift.

Outcome: The EBP project did not result in an overall reduction in the fall rates; however, the fall rate with injury was low in the telemetry unit. The project resulted in an increase in the staff’s knowledge and awareness of multimodal fall prevention strategies.

Conclusion: The reduction in the incidence of falls after the implementation of the EBP project in the telemetry unit was not statistically significant. However, the result indicated a clinically meaningful improvement in fall-related injury outcomes and increased staff knowledge and awareness of the fall prevention strategies.

Comments

Scholarly project submitted to the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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