Date

6-2022

Department

School of Nursing

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Chair

Cindy Goodrich

Keywords

Emergency Room, Patient Fall Rates, Accidental Falls, Patient Safety

Disciplines

Nursing

Abstract

The purpose of this integrative review was to search through the data available on the best practices for preventing accidental patient falls in the emergency room setting. Fall rates continue to be a major problem for many hospital systems across the world. Even when hospital systems put attention toward addressing this problem, many hospital systems continue to struggle with improving their falls rate in the emergency care areas. This integrative review aimed to identify the most effective interventions to decrease the accidental fall rates in the emergency care setting. Many interventions have been proposed to help reduce this occurrence, but many of these interventions have been shown to have little to no difference in the overall accidental fall rates. Some common interventions that have been implemented in an effort to reduce patient fall occurrences are various screening measures to categorize a patient’s likelihood of sustaining an accidental fall, introducing high falls risk patients with various safety measures like nonslip socks, bed alarms, high falls risk bracelets, and ensuring the call light is within reach, and introducing video surveillance for patients who have been deemed as high risk for an accidental fall. This integrative review researched the most effective interventions to reduce accidental fall rates and displays those results with specific numbers to show the improvement correlation. In order to have the best results in any situation, one must follow the researched evidence. This integrative review was initiated with the thought-process of understanding the best interventions to utilize to reduce the patient fall rates effectively and efficiently in the emergency room setting.

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