Custom «Patient Falls in Hospitals» Essay Paper Sample

Hundreds of patients fall in the U.S. hospitals annually. Falling in the health care facility is described as an accidental and unintentional descent to the floor leading to the significant or minor injuries in a client. An unpleasant incident usually results in internal bleeding, wounds, and fractures that require immediate hospitalization. Numerous studies have concluded that health care providers and the other specialists can prevent falls that adversely affect disabled, old, and young clients by developing elimination-related activity. The paper seeks to explore the fall in medical facilities as a primary cause of the client’s decline and his/her significant use of vital services.

Even if an incident does not cause a serious injury, it can increase the likelihood that a patient will require hospitalization in the clinics. Undoubtedly, serious falls require a patient’s placement in the clinic. If not managed immediately and timely, an incident will cause suffering and lasting pain. Moreover, fall can limit one’s functioning, reduce mobility, cause pain as well as impose social burden on families and individuals who suffer.

Patient fall is a serious challenge facing an acute care hospital that can be devastating to the providers and clients’ families. Health care facilities often use it as a standard of measuring the quality of care. Treatment, bed rest, serious disease, the presence of catheters or tubes, medications, surgery, and unfamiliar environment place a patient at risk of falling in the facility. As a result of numerous serious incidents in the hospitals, physicians and the other health care specialists recognize the need of urgent professional assistance to prevent harm and further falls. Due to the fact that the national program Medicare does not compensate the cost of hospitalization due to injuries, patient fall still remains a serious challenge of American clinics (Kurtzman & Buerhaus, 2008).

Every health care provider recognizes the prevention of falling in hospitals as a number one task that requires specific approach to its implementation. Therefore, providers and their colleagues organize a multidisciplinary, devoted team aimed at developing helpful initiatives and radical steps to reduce the risk of falling. Moreover, the specialists also work on collaboratively developing the comprehensive fall-prevention strategy. Despite the significant public attention to this problem, the rate of hospitalized patients due to falling in the hospitals escalates. While each such incident significantly affects patients’ health conditions, it also has a great impact on their length of stay and facility’s cost per case. Oliver, Healey, and Haines (2010) have estimated that injuries raise the cost of care by 60 %, and the average stay in the hospital for those who unintentionally fall is 12 days longer.

Probably every caregiver has faced patient fall in his/her own practice. Due to experience and skills, health care providers have a capacity to prevent it. Due to aging and high vulnerability, patients unintentionally harm themselves. Ubiquitous patient falls have caused a growing concern in patients, their families, and physicians. Therefore, every concerned individual thinks of determining new ways to resolve the issue of top priority. The development of comprehensive, holistic fall-prevention program and a predictive model is a radical step towards fall prevention in hospitals. It is based on managing basic fall risk factors and optimizing the facility’s environment. Although the specific approaches to the clients and constant practice help to lower falls, medical facilities do not systematically refer to them.

In order to reach fall prevention, health care providers are required to develop comprehensive patient care plans with the focus on adequate and immediate interventions for families, caregivers, and patients. All concerned individuals have to effectively use important information, skills, knowledge, and hospital resources to realize the plan. The strategy underlying the predictive model helps to reach low likelihood of falls in medical institutions. Moreover, fall risk assessment is crucial to resolve the serious issue in hospitalized clients.