Quality Improvement Process: Fall Prevention. Essay Sample.

Fall prevention is the act of minimizing patients from unplanned descent to the floor with or without injury. Falls may leads to internal bleeding, fractures and lacerations among other injuries. It also has a psychological impact on the patient such as experiencing trauma which is most often the cause of morbidity and mortality. A fall can be prevented by applying necessary precaution and putting in place control movement mechanism. Reducing the number of beds to an optimum level may also reduce falls within a health Centre.

Health workers should provide a solution to factors that cause a patient fall. They need to keep patients safe and help them to recover. Falls may be prevented by managing confusions among the patients, minimizing the frequency at which patients visit the toilet, monitoring the side effect of administered medicines. The purpose of this paper is to indicate ways in which falls prevention can be achieved.

Literature Review

Injuries and mortality rates resulting from falls have been increasing over the years, old people of the age 85 years and above being the most affected. Between 1991 and 2004, death rates relating to falls increased from 29 to 40 percent (G). 15 percent of hospitalizations is as a result of injuries related to fall rates. 2000 statistical data shows that between $16 billion and $19 billion cost was estimated for nonfatal, fall-related injuries and $170 million for fall-related deaths (Institute of Medicine).

Methods

The organization develops a fall prevention program which involves all stakeholders and their interests towards the goal of providing a quick solution that could be implemented, sustained, and further improved. This can be achieved through organizing leadership meeting to agree on whether creating a fall prevention program is a priority, health care professionals in collaboration with the patients should develop ideas for the program, and departmental representative should develop a blueprint for the program and get the feedback on ideas for the refinement of the program. Plan program development and implementation can be drawn from the previous experience. The plan includes; establishing an organization theory, identifying innovation theory and ways of continuous quality improvement (Perry).

Organizational theory assists to analyze the initial program phase. According to Oliver, acquiescence, compromise, avoidance, manipulation and defiance are ways in which the organization responds to pressures to change the business. Olivers blueprint suggests that to leaders within an organization represents the organization and they should be let to approve that they value implementing a fall screening and prevention program since their support is necessary for successful implementation of the program. The program's workload should be spread across all involved departments to avoid adversely affecting any one department (Elsevier).

Findings

The outcome indicates that there is indeed a quality improvement process fall demands. Nurse telephone advice line is used to place outgoing calls to patients who are vulnerable fall, analyze risk fall risk factor and direct the patients to the appropriate services (Sermeus). Fall requires an interdisciplinary approach. Some preventions are generalized while other are specific to a given patient. No individual can exclusively prevent falls, it requires the involvement of all stakeholders. Effective fall prevention, requires an organization structure and operational practices that promotes teamwork and communication as well as individual expertise. They also need to be balanced by other consideration such as minimizing restrain and maintaining patient mobility, to provide the best possible care to the patient.

Describe the Quality Improvement Process

Quality Improvement Process is the act of making the services to clients better. In health, it may include maintaining hygiene by cleaning medical instruments, provision quality operation equipments and ensuring that the place where the patients are is clean. Patients should be involved in decision making concerning their health. The good relationship between health workers, patients and other stakeholders will lead to improved health provision.

Tools used in patient quality improvement can be technological tools or statistical tools. Technological tools are the software and automated machines. They can be used to diagnose microscopic organisms. Automated tools can also be used to treat complicated diseases and control patients movement which may reduce falls. Tools applied in statics include; histograms, bar charts, checklists and Pareto diagrams among others. These tools are used to identify the utilization of the bed. These tools are used to record data. They can record the number of bed in a hospital, the health progress of the patient. They are used to analyze the recorded data and make comparisons from which important information can be obtained. Observing accurate measurement can be used in making prediction about the future. Short, medium and long term health plans can be made and hence improving the quality of the health sector.

References

Elsevier, A. O. (n.d.). Strategic Challenges and Strategic Responses.

G, R. (n.d.). Measuring Quality Improvement in Healthcare.

Institute of Medicine. (n.d.). Advancing Quality Improvement Research.

Perry, A. G. (n.d.). Nursing Interventions & Clinical Skills.

Sermeus, W. (n.d.). Nursing Informatics.