A Novel Intervention to Prevent In-Patient Falls

Abstract

Falls in healthcare facilities are a frequent adverse event and a critical patient safety problem. Since 2008 we joined the Falls Prevention Campaign of the Center for Clinical Risk Management and Patient Safety of the Tuscany Region and sustained a continuous improvement process involving the governing body, medical staff, nurses, patients and their families. Despite the effort to reduce falls, 3 sentinel events resulting in patient deaths occurred in 2016, therefore the local patient safety team decided to revise and update the preventive interventions. The aim of the study is to evaluate the effects of an improvement program to prevent in-patient falls, on the basis of systemic analysis of reported incidents in one of the province that belongs to Tuscany Northwest Trust.