Strategies for engagement: One organization's path to decreasing fall rates in the inpatient setting

Purpose:
One of our greatest challenges in injury prevention continues to be fall prevention. Our objective through implementing this innovative program was to prevent falls by engaging and empowering all members of the health care team as well as the patients and their families.

Significance:
Falls may lead to increased pain/discomfort to patients,decreased trust between our patients and the healthcare team, extended length of stay and increased utilization of resources. As well falls can negatively impact nurses and the way they feel about their work and their effectiveness.

Strategy and Implementation:
The identification of this complex and widespread problem required the creation of a novel and multifaceted plan to combat our increased fall rate. The hospital wide falls taskforce, including members from both the adult and children's hospital as well as leadership and staff members worked together to formulate various strategies to decrease our falls rate. Plans included the implementation of safety huddles, the use of a post falls huddles, and the education of falls champions among our professional and ancillary staff as well as various strategies to educate both our patients and our staff. These educational strategies included the creation of falls web site and the creation of falls drills. These drills simulated typical falls in all inpatient and outpatient areas to educate and engage the staff in falls prevention and patient safety. Our comprehensive plan was created, implemented and reinforced by our entire nursing staff.

Evaluation:
Qualitative and quantitative data were collected. A multidisciplinary team reviewed this data and identified common themes and appropriate plans were implmented. The total effect of this program has yielded a decrease in our overall falls rate.

Implications for Practice:
Decreasing the rates of falls is crucial to patient's physical and emotional well being, the fianancial well being of our institituion, as well as the job satisfaction of our nurses. Through engaging and empowering all members of the team reductions can be made in the inpatient falls rate.