The Fall Prevention Among High Risk Patients Research Paper

The Fall Prevention Among High Risk Patients - Research Paper Example to population at high risk, and one step closer to this goal is through this study by raising awareness about this problem and propose solutions in minimizing falls, more specifically for patients at high risk. Literature Review A fall is an incident when a patient â€Å"unexpectedly comes to rest on the ground, floor or another level† (Haines et al, 2007). Falls are a major safety concern for hospitals, which accounts to 32.3% of incidents related to safety, and 35.3% of those incidences resulted to harm and even death (Healey et al, 2007). Medicaid has a greater utilization costs resulting from falls (Shumway-Cook et al, 2009). Fortunately, there are already a vast number of studies which were addressed for falls and fall prevention is already a part of the nursing curriculum a long time ago. Researches in risk identification for falls are abundant especially the studies among the elderly population. The study of Rubenstein (2006) tabulated the risk factors for falls from th e most frequent to the less common; the most prominent risk factor is weakness, followed by balance deficit, gait deficit, visual deficit, limited mobility, cognitive impairment, impaired functioning and postural hypotension. Other risk factors identified by Faulkner et al (2009) are height, fear of falling, â€Å"fast-paced walking speed†. Lee & Stokic (2008) investigated the risk factors for falls in patient undergoing rehabilitation identified the diagnoses of stroke, amputation and large co-morbidities as additional risk factors for falls. Among the postmenopausal women, the risks factors for falls were related to age, education, hearing status, history of fracture and hypothyroidism (Barrett-Connor et al, 2008). In terms of visual deficit, visual field loss appears to be the specific risk... This study aims to reduce the incidence of falls among the populations who are at high risk for falls in the hospital setting. This study will take place at a community hospital in Maryland. This study is a non-experimental, retrospective, descriptive case study. This design is selected since the paper will identify the risk factors that are present in the study setting without any manipulation of the variables. This study will try to investigate the fall incidences and the risk factors present retrospectively rather than prospectively. It is a case study since it will attempt to investigate in-depth the institution selected by the researcher to understand the issues underlying the risk factors and fall incidents in order to come up with fall prevention strategies in response to the risks identified. This study has a major strength in data collection, which does not require experimental treatment and is convenience for the researcher to gather data using available records. However, weaknesses of this study is the sampling bias (though the convenience sample of the hospital selected), small sampling size and poor generalizability of the findings. The study will use descri ptive statistical measures through the use of SPSS. This study will only identify the risk factors and use simple statistical tables in determination of the most frequently observed risk factors and to be place on a graph. Relationship of the variables will be assessed using the product-moment correlation coefficient.