Assisted Suicide Case Study Essay

The purpose of this case study is to evaluate my current place of employment for the causes of falls within the dementia/psychiatric unit, as they relate to medication usage, medical conditions of the patients, and staff to patient ratio, and to develop new ways to preventing falls. As a nursing leader in a management role, I will also incorporate ethics, staff motivation, team building collective bargaining partnership and performance management to work with my staff to reduce the incidence of falls. One of the causes of falls at my current place of employment is patients taking multiple medications. Polypharmacy is when a patient uses four or more medications to treat an illness. The usage of many medications often lead to a fall. Baranzini, Diurni, Ceccan, Poloni, Cazzamalli, Constantin and Callegari (2009), explain that “Polypharmacy is
Ward (2013), comes up with several solutions to manage a unit with limited staff, I will focus on two solutions. First, Ward (2013) says, to “prioritize” the assignments from the most significant to the least important (para. 4). To further explain, if you have 8 patients, you will take care of the patients who are most at risk for falls first, and then care for the rest in descending order of risk. Second, Ward (2013) illustrates the importance of delegating. She says, “Effective delegation is increasingly important when there is a reduction in staff” (para.4). To further explain, if a new patient comes on the unit, I will shift my responsibility of getting basic information to the cna, as long as it is in their scope of practice. A good responsibility to shift is acquiring the patient is weight, height, vital signs, and putting on the patient’s arm band. This will reduce the responsibilities of the nurse who can focus on additional strategies to reduce falls with limited