That’s Fall She Wrote: Decreasing the Patient Fall Rate on a Medical-Surgical Unit Through an Enhanced Fall Algorithm in the Electronic Medical Record

All falls, regardless of harm, increase the length of stay for the patient in the hospital (Dunne et al., 2014), and are thus a focus for the Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) in improving patient outcomes at the microsystem level. This paper will focus on the use of an enhanced fall algorithm (Moskowitz et al., 2020) that combines the use of nursing assessment, medications, laboratory results, and service to assess risk of the patient for falls. This algorithm will be integrated into the electronic medical record (EMR) to aid in clinical decision making and communication between staff and the disciplines. The aim of this project is to decrease the number of patient falls per 1,000 patient days by 50% from 2.04 falls per 1,000 patient days to 1.02 falls per 1,000 patient days by June 30, 2021. Measures for the project after implementation will be the amount of falls per 1,000 patient days. Due to COVID restrictions and difficulty in communication, the scope of this paper and the project will be limited to establishing a clear purpose and intervention for future use to prevent patient falls as well as anticipated results