Preview

Staff Development Teaching for Preventing Falls in the Elderly Long Term Care Facilities

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1629 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Staff Development Teaching for Preventing Falls in the Elderly Long Term Care Facilities
Staff Development Teaching for Preventing Falls in the Elderly Long Term Care Facilities
Background
In the United States, unintentional falls are the most common cause of nonfatal injuries for people older than 65 years. Up to 32 percent of community individuals over the age of 65 fall each year.
Females fall more frequently than man in this age group, especially due to the fact that most female elderlies have bone weakness such as osteoporosis, which makes the fall to cause fatal injuries sometimes. Fall related injuries are the most common cause of accidental death in those over the age of 65. Approximately 40 fall related deaths per 100,000 people per year. Thus, fall are a growing public health problem that need to be addressed. Patient would not only suffer from such fall but the facility goes through hardships as well to deal with the patient. Fall related death rate in elderly group has been increasing in USA.
Recently, falling has been occurring a lot in the long-term facilities. Falling has the highest rate of incident in the long-term facility because most of the patients are elderly. Falls can cause serious injuries and accidental death. In order to prevent falls in the elderly is very important.
There are several different approaches to deal with predispose factors for elderly type of injury. I am going to reviews the major risk fators of falls and how to prevention for elderly populations living in long term care facilities. The effective falls intervention programs should take a multifaceted approach.

Assess the staff for ability of learning and understanding
I explained the background of important fall precaution to our licensed nurses and CNAs, the ones who gives care to the patients with ADL most closely. The Staff members, Licensed Nurses, and CNAs have different nationalities with different language. Licensed Nurses are 70% LVN and 30% RN. The experience in the healthcare facility for most of them is at least

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Fall Prevention Case Study

    • 3462 Words
    • 14 Pages

    Falls in the hospital are the major cause for the morbidity and the mortality in the elderly population. Falls among the elderly is increasigly being recognised and it is a major concern for the developed as well as the developing country. The purpose of this paper is to descibe the epidemiology of fall in the elderly in the hospital , incluidng the charateristics, circumstances and fall related related injuries. The focus of this program is to support the staff in identifying the system issues which gives rise to the error and the near miss situation. A quality improvement initiative was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a fall prevention program using education and a fall prevention kit…

    • 3462 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Falls can result in injury, loss of independence, reduced quality of life, and death in the elderly (Mauk 2010). According to the Hendrich II Falls Risk Model, Ms. Lee is at great risk. Confusion, disorientation and impulsivity are showed by Ms. Lee. She forgets that she is cooking and leaves the stove on and burns pots and pans. It is unable to tell if Ms. Lee is taking her medications as scheduled because pills are scattered out of the containers. Ms. Lee often forgets and uses a tape recorder to remind her of several tasks. Ms. Lee shows signs of depression because she lives alone and never speaks of engaging in activities. She does not mention of friends or other family members who stop by to see her. Ms. Lee does not have any…

    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Education provides the patient with the knowledge of the importance of safety and what part he or she contributes in their care as well as risk factor identified. Fall prevention programs are designed to determine fall risk and prevention strategies while collaborating with the patient’s health care. Informing both the patient and the family will bring an understanding and mindfulness to fall prevention. Falls are devastating to both the patient and the hospital considering a single fall may result in a downward spiral of reduced mobility with a loss of function and further risk of falls. Along with proper education, fall risk assessments are vital to the fall prevention process. These fall risk assessment are implemented hospital wide and are conducted every shift, change in status, during transfers to different units and at discharge (St. Peter’s Hospital, 2012). Compliance and consistency reduces falls and the overall cost of falls throughout the hospital improving the…

    • 1690 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Kruschke and Butcher (2017) research supports “The purpose of the current fall prevention evidence-based practice guideline is to describe important strategies that will identify individuals at risk for falls, especially those 65 and older” (p. 16). A risk assessment tool is commonly used throughout hospitals to assess clients to determine if they are a fall risk. This screens the client based on several difference factors such as their age, fall history, medications, mobility, and several others. Another tool is the use of the 10-step protocol to screen the client. “The use of the 10-step protocol provides the tools needed to screen and/or assess for falls, screen for gait and balance, and develop an individualized fall intervention program intended to reduce falls in the aging population” (Kruschke & Butcher, 2017, p. 21). All fall prevention tools may assess the client differently but have the same goal in mind: maintaining safety and preventing the client from falling and injuring themselves. Along with assessment tools, there are other preventive measures that can be done. Yellow is standard throughout hospitals for high fall risk. A yellow arm band, yellow socks, and yellow gowns can indicate that the client is a high fall risk. Bed alarms are also used to alarm the nurses that the client is trying to get up out of bed. Educating the client to ring the call light and waiting on help before getting up is also a preventive measure. Goodwin et al. (2014) noted that multifactorial interventions, where each client’s interventions are tailored to their needs, have shown to reduce the rate of falls (p. 2). This means that one client may just have yellow socks and yellow arm band on to let staff know the client is a high fall risk and another client may have the arm band and socks on but also the bed alarm must be…

    • 1156 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The purpose of the research is to determine whether multimedia fall prevention education using different instructional strategies increases older adult’s knowledge of fall threats and their fall prevention behaviors. The population being studied in this research is community dwelling older adults who participated in response to flyers or through senior housing and community facilities. There are fifty-three of these older adults who are 65 years old or older and have no physical or mental disabilities. The nursing intervention involved in this research is to examine, assess and keep of the fall threats knowledge and fall prevention behaviors (actions taken with the intention of preventing a fall). This study is a three-group randomized controlled…

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the Practicum Course and the professional Capstone Project, the knowledge, clinical experience, and the skills that Seema acquired during the whole course is represented and reflected through this journal. Hence, this journal is a complete reflection of the practices that Seema have had at the clinic, the health care system that she observed, the technological development used to treat patients, and the policies of health care that were present in the firms of healthcare systems. On the basis of the growing problem of falls within the older adults, and the efforts carried out to solve the problem, this journal will reflect the entire learnings that Seema…

    • 1477 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Falls Risk Assessment

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Falls within the aged population are prevalent especially in individuals with dementia, as they tend to have marked impairment in their gait and balance (Shaw, 2007). Falls tend to occur at the bedside and are associated with agitation, aggression, restlessness, attempts to ambulate or lack of awareness of wandering in people with dementia (Australian Commission of Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) (2009). Falls risk assessment is the responsibility of all registered nursing staff within residential aged care. Conducting a falls risk assessment for residents is an important step in outlining steps to be taken to assist individuals residents to ambulate safely. Due to residents with dementia typically having a cognitive impairment, they should be more frequently observed as their risk of falling is greater (Shaw, 2007). Strategies to reduce risk of falls include staff providing special socks that have grip on them when retiring a resident to bed, and to improve gait, balance, mobility and flexibility exercise/ activity and mobility exercises can be utilised such as strengthen the leg muscles. (Shaw, 2007). Malnutrition and residents maintaining adequate nutritional intake is another area that RNs should…

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Falls are a common occurrence among medical, surgical and elderly patients in hospitals. One of the largest categories of reported adverse events in hospitals are patient falls, which are estimated to cost more than $20 billion a year. (2010 Lippincott Williams &Wilkins, Inc.)…

    • 1136 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fall Prevention Research

    • 719 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Although the CDC has identified some successful exercise programs for fall prevention, these programs are not widely implemented in the real world. Doctors, physical therapists, nurses, and other healthcare professionals are proficient at identifying the risks commonly associated with falls in older adults, but making the connection between these clear risks and the necessary interventions is a challenge for them. Thus, the actual application of the research is neglected.…

    • 719 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Falls are one of the most common adverse events in health care institutions. Health care facilities are entitled to monitor patients and visitors who are in the risk of falls when entering their premises.…

    • 635 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Generally, the role of occupational therapists in falls prevention among elderly people, I think, could be very broad and significant. The elderly people can receive occupational therapy services for falls prevention in a variety of settings, such as their own houses, rehabilitation centres, acute care hospitals and nursing homes.…

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Safety is a huge concern with all ages across the life span but elderly are at a higher risk for safety issues. Falls, automobile accidents, and injures related to burns or fires are a big risk for the older adult. Prescribed medications can even alter their balance or affect…

    • 1870 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The problem to be addressed is the frequency of falls in the Alzheimer’s disease population in the long-term care settings and a consistent falls prevention training through collaboration with nurse practitioners. Falls are frequent in the nursing home; there is an average of about 1.5 falls per nursing home bed per year. Even though most falls are non-injurious, 10% to 20% resulted in hospitalization; twenty percent of falls are at 65 years, and older resulted in death, 35% of falls causes severe injuries, and 8% resulted in fracture (CDC, 2017). There is a mandate for primary care providers such as NPs and PAs who care for residents in the nursing home…

    • 617 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fall Prevention

    • 1301 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Fall and fall related problems is continuously growing and being challenges in health care settings today. The result of fall has been increased in population which affects the patient health, injury, hospital costs of test and treatment, death, and prolonged hospitalization. Falls and fall injury is recognized as a serious problems for our patients because it creates the cost burden to the hospitals, so it is important to identify the quality and financial impact of fall prevention program for adult in acute care settings. The fall prevention program will help to reduce the fall rates and improve the health care delivery in our patients. In order to determine which methods to consider as successful to prevent falls and fall related injury,…

    • 1301 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Healthy Aging Month Essay

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages

    As we get older, there are physiological changes that occur which are a natural part of aging. We can’t stop the aging process, but we can be aware of the changes in our bodies, start healthy routines and get help when needed to benefit our overall well being. For many, September is a time to renew, recharge and find motivation for new pursuits. Here are some top tips that bring together the two important topics of healthy aging and falls prevention awareness:…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays