Fall Prevention Study

A new study shows that nurse-led fall prevention programs have a significant impact on reducing the number of falls patients experience in healthcare facilities.

Despite there already being numerous studies on how to prevent falls in care facilities, there are very few that focus on nurse-led programs. However, nurses are critical in preventing falls, as they work directly with patients and are always the ones to educate the patients. The World Health Organization also identified falls to be the second leading cause of accidental injury deaths worldwide.

With this in mind, it’s surprising that more long-term care facility directors aren’t interested in funding more research, such as this one, to prevent large amounts of falls and unnecessary deaths in their facilities. Yet anyone who has experience with nursing and assisted living facilities can imagine the unlikelihood that directors pay even a passing glance to such life-saving studies.

For those who are looking to learn from such studies, this one used various strategies to find the following: nurse-led intervention programs certainly reduce falls; the combination of several strategies is more effective than a single intervention; continued training and education are vital in maintaining these positive results; nurses struggle to implement these programs considering their time constraints, typical understaffing, and limited support from their institution; and finally, these results are found to become even better with increased organizational commitment and teamwork.

Essentially, facilities looking to reduce the likelihood of falls and prevent unnecessary deaths should adopt these nurse-led fall prevention programs as well as pursue nurse training, organizational support, and context-specific strategies.

This study, published in the International Journal of Nursing Studies Advances, is the first of its kind in a decade and has excitingly exemplified how to extend life among those in acute care facilities. We should only hope that facility directors may be wise enough to listen.