What do you do to prevent falls?

[carebear01]

I work on a med/surg unit with a diverse population. Last month we had four falls We use bed alarms, yellow socks, fall armbands and fall alert signs. Something is not working. The bed alarms are not used 100% of the time. Sometimes they do not work or someone may forget to set the alarm. I have volunteered to do research to figure out what we need to do to change this problem. What does your unit to do prevent falls? Any advice would be appreciated

[pinkiepie_RN]

Ugh...this topic makes me cringe. I'm in psych and I think we have more falls this month for our unit than the rest of the hospital combined. Most of the falls occur on our acutely psychotic patients, who think they're somewhere else and I don't the the sedative/hypnotics we hand out like candy at bedtime help either. We have to fill out incident reports as well as do a paper called a "fall huddle" where we're required to brainstorm what might be beneficial to prevent this patient from falling again. It doesn't help that half the time we go in a room and see a pt on the floor during our 30 minute rounding and ask them why they're on the floor or how they got there they say "I have no idea".

[General E. Speaking, RN, RN]

We have to call a "Code Yellow" and folks come running..... then we simply put the patient in bubble wrap and tuck them back into bed.