I'm a new nurse and, fortunately, have never had a patient fall on my shift. Falls prevention is an issue on my unit where there is usually a fall very one to three days. Sometimes longer, but very rarely. Our nurse manager wants us all (techs and RNs) to go into every patient's room each hour and say "I am taking you to the bathroom!" in order to prevent falls which are usually occurring when patients are taking themselves to the bathroom. It sounds like an ideal solution, however I'm trying to figure out to fit that into my shift. I have 5 patients, so if I do rounding Q2 (and my tech does them on the alternate hours), it seems it would take 5-10 minutes to get into each patient's room, wake them up, take them to the potty, wait while they eliminate and wash up, and then get them tucked back into bed. Multiply that by 5 patients and that takes up quite a bit of time that I already don't feel I have. Most of us don't get out on time as it is.
My question is - even though purposeful rounding every hour seems like the safest thing to do - is it also very realistic or necessary for nurses and techs to be waking up every patient that often? Are there some other strategies that have worked? I'm not asking for falls identification like falls bracelets and Morse Fall scales. We have all that. What our unit needs is a realistic and practical approach to keep patients safe. Typically what I do is let the patients know that even though it's embarrassing to soil yourself in bed, a fall-related injury would be a lot more difficult to fix. I also let them know that I haven't had a patient fall yet, "and I would hate for you to break that record!" I don't know if that's really efficient, or if I've just been lucky - but I'm looking for some additional simple strategies that are truly effective.
