Improvements on Fall Risk Assessment to Promote Patient and Employee Safety

Cohort 22 of the University of San Francisco’s MSN, Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) program conducted a study focusing on the implementation of the Hendrich II Fall Risk Model and the Patient Mobility Assessment Tool (PMAT) at an urban California Bay Area hospital. Assessments were performed on 74 patients (n = 74) between January 2018 and April 2018. Cohort 22 determined that the Hendrich II test with introductions took an average of 01:49 minutes to conduct. It was also determined that it took and average of 03:12 minutes to conduct the PMAT. 88.19% (66/74) patients correctly estimated their level of mobility. This indicates that nurses can adequately trust a patient’s judgement, but still should conduct mobility assessments to minimize injury to patients and staff. Lastly, educational videos were created for the purpose of training new nurses and retraining currently-employed nurses. These findings were presented to the facility’s falls committee