Anyone have any good fall prevention measures

Hello

I work at a LTC facility and recently we were having major issues with falls, here are a few things we put into place:

1. Seat belts that are actually alarms, if the resident undoes the belt an alarm goes off.

2. Bed Tab or pressure alarms, can be put on the back of the chairs, with the clip attached to resident, they get up, tab pulls out, alarm goes off, same concept with pressure alarm on bed, pad under mattresss, res. gets up, alarm goes off.

3. Not sure how big facility you work at but we even tried if you have like 3 aides on your hall, at meal time the aides stay in dining room to pass trays, when the meal is starting to get over and residents are leaving then 1 aide goes to hall to assist residents with toileting, getting in bed ect..... that way no resident is on the hall with no aide, and the other aides are still assisting in the dining room.

4. The residents that are those late ones to lie down, have them go to the dining room and put a movie in the VCR to be watched while the aides are assisting the residents tht have to be put down first due to high acuity.

http://www.patientsafety.gov/SafetyT...erventions.pdf

I am a little different in my thoughts about falling. Falls ARE going to happen no matter what implementations you do! It is sadly part of the gravity we all face!

So instead of going all off on fall prevention, I go more on the side of fall protection! We use many implementations to stop falls..don't get me wrong...but they still happen, even if it goes from one time a week to one time a month/year!

So in addition to alarms, baby monitors, making sure rooms are not cluttered...and all that...we also prepare for if a fall happens what can we do to minimize injury!

We have used futons so the falls oob are less severe, or pads by beds. We have padded corners of furniture for frequent fallers or gotten dangerous furniture out. We use hip pads, shin pads, and others for other high risk patients. IT takes some investigation to figure out the perfect plan and protection and must be done on an individual basis (like some get up at night to use the toliet and fall...where others just get up all day and wonder...so you have to cater to their needs the best you can).

So fall prevention and PROTECTION needs to be the mindset...and sadly protection is overlooked...But realize..falls do happen no matter what..gravity has been here long berfore we ever were..so be rational and not try to focus so much on prevention of all falls as much as a nice balance of stopping them and preventing injury as they happen ...

Yep! I've often thought about bubble wrapping one of our frequent fallers!

A lot of times I will have a resident sit right beside me in their wheelchair when passing meds from my cart, so I can keep an eye on them, even when they have a tab alarm or seat-belt on.

I think a frequent cause of falls is residents who are bored! We have lots of activities for our residents. In the evening the 3-11 aides take turns providing activities for the residents who fall frequently or have behavior problems (ususally the same crowd). This has helped with our fall rate.

So true...the last activity posted is for 3pm. Once a week he stays until 6pm, but its only a movie. Would be nice to have an aid to an activity, but "staffing" prohibits it. Now years ago (10 or so) I remember doing an activity or two on my 3-11 shift...my how time has changed!