Falls In Hospitals: A Case Study

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Being a patient in a hospital is a huge stressor and constant worry for anyone. Whether it is being told that you are extremely ill, or the need for a surgery, no one wants to hear it. However, once you add the possibility of falling and getting hurt into the situation, it heightens all of the fears and stress one already has. The risk of falls is an important concept in the healthcare field, because it is a possibility for every single patient in the healthcare setting, and can easily add significant injuries to the circumstances at hand. Falls should be considered a main problem (potential or actual) in the healthcare setting because it adds serious injuries to patients existing conditions, it increases the length of stay in the hospital, …show more content…
If it was a bone that is used for ambulating, the patient is going to have to go through different types of therapy in order to learn how to get around with this injury and possible assistive device if needed. Therapy can be a lengthy process when learning new information, especially when you are hurt. On top of the therapy, patients will typically be put onto additional medications for pain and possibly infection if the break is significant enough. The more therapies and medications that the patient is on, the more money that they are going to have to spend, which again is going to add a stressor into the patients situation. There is an average increase of hospital charges of $4200 for patient who fall, compared to those who do not (Swartzell MSN RN, Fulton PhD RN, & Friesth PhD RN, …show more content…
If that is the case, and the patient’s bill is significantly large due to increased medications and therapies because of a fall, it is going to be a problem for the hospital. According to the Journal of Nursing Care Quality, there will be an estimated 17,293,000 falls resulting in injury in the United States alone, by the year 2020. With that many falls, it would add up to be a projected cost of $85.37 billion (Poe MScN RN, Cvach MS RN, Gartrell MS RN, Radzik MS RN, & Joy BSN RN, 2004). Since hospitals have to pay for things like falls, charting is an extremely important part of everyday care. MedSurg Nursing reported that 44% of patients, who did fall, were not charted as being at high risk for falling (Swartzell MSN RN, Fulton PhD RN, & Friesth PhD RN, 2013). Although those patients did go through tests and asked questions to determine where they fall on the Morse Fall Risk Scale, more than one third of the time the patient was not stated at high enough risk for their condition. When the test instrument was updated to its current status, the authors determined that there are now over six hundred different possible fall risk variables. With that much to consider with each patient, a lot of nurses and doctors are not taking the time needed to actually evaluate patients to the extent that they need to be evaluated correctly. Nurses are being taught to slow down and look deeper
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