Assessment of Fall Protocol Use on a Medical-Telemetry Unit

Purpose: This quality improvement project serves to implement a fall prevention plan to decrease patient falls on the medical-telemetry unit of a large metropolitan hospital. Background: Patient falls are a persistent nationwide problem in the acute care setting. Between 700,000 and 1,000,000 falls occur in hospital every year and approximately 30-35% of these falls result in injury and 11,000 falls result in death (Health Research & Educational Trust, 2016). Falls always cause harm to the patient, whether it is emotional or physical; but, falls can also cause harm to the providers, family, and organization. Patient injury, additional hospital expenses, and non-reimbursement from insurance companies accrue costs with the organization. In addition, harm to the patient would cause negative patient outcomes that would affect the reputation and patient satisfaction scores of the hospital. The large metropolitan hospital has an increase in patient falls from fiscal year 2016 to 2017. The medical-telemetry unit’s current fall prevention protocol needs to be addressed so that an effective, evidence-based practice intervention could be implemented to decrease patient falls and improve patient outcomes