MedicalNurseTraining.com

Author:  Wade M. Thomas

The FDA recently updated a document on their website that deals with Hospital Bed Safety on April 5, 2010.  I’ll give the link here at the beginning of the article for you to download and use at your hospital.

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/GeneralHospitalDevicesandSupplies/HospitalBeds/ucm125857.pdf

There are about 2.5 million hospital and nursing home beds in use in the U.S.  From 1985 through 2008, it was reported to the FDA that 803 patients/residents were caught, trapped, entangled, or strangled in beds with rails.  480 people died, 138 had a nonfatal injury and 185 were not injured because the staff intervened.  MOST OF THE PATIENTS WERE FRAIL, ELDERLY OR CONFUSED.

A more detailed look at hospital bed safety can been seen on the FDA website below:

http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/GeneralHospitalDevicesandSupplies/HospitalBeds/default.htm

A lot of hospitals still don’t know about ( or else do know but have decided not to do anything about ) the bed safety issue with their old hospital beds.  There is a test kit available that the FDA suggests facilities use to test their beds with from National Safety Technologies.  You can find the test kit at this address:  http://www.nst-usa.com/Pages/B4000Main.html

Patient Safety

Patients who have problems with memory, sleeping, incontinence, pain, uncontrolled body movement, or who get out of bed and walk unsafely without assistance, must be carefully assessed for the best ways to keep them from harm, such as falling. Assessment by the patient’s health care team will help to determine how best to keep the patient safe. Historically, physical restraints (such as vests, ankle or wrist restraints) were used to try to keep patients safe in health care facilities. In recent years, the health care community has recognized that physically restraining patients can be dangerous. Although not indicated for this use, bed rails are sometimes used as restraints. Regulatory agencies, health care organizations, product manufacturers and advocacy groups encourage hospitals, nursing homes and home care providers to assess patients’ needs and to provide safe care without restraints.

The Benefits and Risks of Bed Rails

Potential benefits of bed rails include:

• Aiding in turning and repositioning within the bed.
• Providing a hand-hold for getting into or out of bed.
• Providing a feeling of comfort and security.
• Reducing the risk of patients falling out of bed when being transported.
• Providing easy access to bed controls and personal care items.

Potential risks of bed rails may include:

• Strangling, suffocating, bodily injury or death when patients or part of their body are caught between rails or between the bed rails and mattress.
• More serious injuries from falls when patients climb over rails.
• Skin bruising, cuts, and scrapes.
• Inducing agitated behavior when bed rails are used as a restraint.
• Feeling isolated or unnecessarily restricted.
• Preventing patients, who are able to get out of bed, from performing routine activities such as going to the bathroom or retrieving something from a closet.

Meeting Patients’ Needs for Safety

Most patients can be in bed safely without bed rails. Consider the following:

• Use beds that can be raised and lowered close to the floor to accommodate both patient and health care worker needs.
• Keep the bed in the lowest position with wheels locked.
• When the patient is at risk of falling out of bed, place mats next to the bed, as long as this does not create a greater risk of accident.
• Use transfer or mobility aids.
• Monitor patients frequently.
• Anticipate the reasons patients get out of bed such as hunger, thirst, going to the bathroom, restlessness and pain; meet these needs by offering food and fluids, scheduling ample toileting, and providing calming interventions and pain relief.

When bed rails are used, perform an on-going assessment of the patient’s physical and mental status; closely monitor high-risk patients. Consider the following:

• Lower one or more sections of the bed rail, such as the foot rail.
• Use a proper size mattress or mattress with raised foam edges to prevent patients from being trapped between the mattress and rail.
• Reduce the gaps between the mattress and side rails.

Which Ways of Reducing Risks are Best?

A process that requires ongoing patient evaluation and monitoring will result in optimizing bed safety. Many patients go through a period of adjustment to become comfortable with new options. Patients and their families should talk to their health care planning team to find out which options are best for them.

Patient or Family Concerns About Bed Rail Use

If patients or family ask about using bed rails, health care providers should:

• Encourage patients or family to talk to their health care planning team to determine whether or not bed rails are indicated.
• Reassure patients and their families that in many cases the patient can sleep safely without bed rails.
• Reassess the need for using bed rails on a frequent, regular basis.

Wade Thomas is a Hospital Falls Consultant to hospitals primarily in the State of Florida and a Nursing Home Falls Consultant for Nursing Homes in the State of Florida.  He works to provide education, training, and fall prevention products that will help any hospital to decrease their fall rates and more importantly, their falls with injuries rates.  He attends the annual USF/VA VISN8 Patient Safety Conference in Clearwater Beach, Florida and also attends the State of Florida annual Florida Health Care Association show for nursing home directors and administrators.  To contact Mr. Thomas for more information on how he or one of his associates can work with your hospital, please email WadeThomas at AOL.com

Copyright 2010 - Wade M. Thomas & MedicalNurseTraining.com - Please feel free to share this article with your friends and colleagues.  Please leave the entire article and author’s biography box intact.  Thank You.

New inexpensive technologies by Safer Falls.com significantly reduce the risk of falls and protect against the effect of falls particularly in the population now approaching 60 and above. New personal use technologies that are relatively unknown to some in the medical field, and more often the public can easily eliminate these preventable injuries and deaths.  The National Center for Patient Safety recently recommended the use of these new approaches to be used in treating patients whom are at high risk.

Patrick Devaney, Founder of Medical Nurse Training, Inc; discusses the necessity of such products when dealing with an elderly person who is at risk for falls in Long Term Care Facilities or in-home.  “Many people who try to convalesce at home from hip fractures and head injuries don’t fully recover.  There are some new affordable devices that can prevent these injuries from ever occurring.” Mr. Devaney goes on about how each device can be necessary for care and each individual’s unique situation in the accompanying video.

Medical Nurse Training, Inc.  provides the latest on-line training to Doctors and Nurses on fall prevention and protection. This includes in-house education on devices that will reduce injury from falls and related deaths and on-line education for those concerned about falls at home.

Hip Protectors – High Impact – absorbing pads that help protect hip bones against injury from falls. About 320,000 people suffer a hip fracture every year.  These pads are built into briefs, panties, sweat pants and sweat shorts. They can easily be laundered and re-used numerous times to help protect from falls. The use of these devices has been clinically proven to reduce injury. Many individuals that experience a fall are afraid to continue normal activities like walking. These devices help these people resume a normal life. Hip Fracture is one of the number one causes of death in older individuals. Our experience shows that hip protectors are generally not known by the general public

Fall Alarms – Inexpensive bed and chair exit electronic monitors otherwise known as Fall Alarms, assist with the observation of patients and family members to help reduce falls and the potential for elopement from home or a facility. A variety of sensor accessories may be used including toileting sensors, bed/chair sensors, infrared sensors and self releasing sensors may be attached to the monitor to reduce risk. These alarms include a gentle voice reminder not to get up without assistance.

Floor Cushions and Bath Mats – Certain areas of the home are very high risk for injury from falls like the bathroom. Special floor cushions and bath mats are designed to help reduce the impact from a fall and are frequently talked about in the clinical literature. These floor cushions are tri-fold in design, making them convenient to carry to areas requiring the most immediate protection. Bathrooms are also very high risk zones. The sure step bath mat can be used to significantly reduce the impact of a fall.

A complete list of Fall Prevention Products and availability and Clinical Resources are available at www.SaferFalls.com.  Fall Prevention and Protection Training Programs are available at www.MedicalNurseTraining.com. 

By Wade Thomas

When helping administrators and managers decide what the best products are at Preventing Hospital Falls, I always like to look at both the products and non-product alternatives to preventing hospital falls.  So many times a patient just needs to go to the bathroom, that constant rounding by the CNAs ( PCTs or PCAs ) and RNs are all that are needed to show a decrease in fall rates.

But products such as the Posey Bed Alarms are also great fall prevention products to help assist the nurses in keeping their patient safe and preventing hospital preventable falls!!  The best part about it is that the nurses do NOT need a doctor’s order to use a bed alarm on a patient.  It is based on nursing judgment whether they need to use one or not, or better yet, when it is written into the hospital’s policies and fall prevention protocols, the nurses don’t even have to think about it - they just do it !!!

It’s also important to have awareness of nursing practices.  I was recently in a hospital where the falls rates were really high, and the CNO and managers were asking me to find out more information as to why their rates were so high.  Upon exploring this with their nurses and CNAs, I discovered a two really important reasons why they were having issues.

First, the nurses where spread out among 3 to 4 wings on a floor.  They would have 2 patients on Wing A, 2 or 3 on Wing B, and 1 on Wing C and in one case, one patient on Wing D.  Most of the nurses were spread among 3 wings on the floor.  The CNAs were also spread thin covering not the normal 10 to 12 patients, but they were covering 12 to 14 patients, especially when the hospital would pull a CNA to be a Sitter to watch a patient, because the doctors are use to ordering sitters.

By using the Posey Sitter II Bed Alarm, then CNAs were effectively able to manage that number of patients across the 3 to 4 wings that they were covering.  They hooked the alarms to the nurse call system, and whenever the alarm would start talking to the patient ( yes, I did say TALKING BED ALARMS ), it would call the nurse call system.  For those confused patients, they would set the alarms to TONE ONLY, and it would ring the tone AND call the nurse call system.

The second big problem was that the nurses, nor CNAs, did NOT have the time to ask and take each patient to the bathroom.  And when they would take them, they would leave them in the bathroom and help the patient in another room and come back and check on the patient in the bathroom.  THUS, the explanation for the BIG INCREASE IN BATHROOM Related Hospital Falls.

Now, there are solutions available to help solve that problem also.  But it really comes back to the nursing practice of AWARENESS !!!  Being aware of the patient’s needs will help predict future behavior or activities and can help in preventing hospital falls!!!

Other ways that can help hospitals in preventing hospital falls includes:

1. From the website Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare, hospitals are teaming up with each other, regardless of their competitive natures and locations to help solve this problem:

Hospitals Collaborate to Prevent Falls

By Kathryn Pelczarski and Cynthia Wallace

Philadelphia-area hospitals have charted a unique strategy in patient safety: Facilities that are normally competing for patients are collectively identifying effective measures to prevent patient falls. Harnessing their strength as a regional collaborative, the hospitals have shared stories of how to implement effective interventions for falls prevention and have participated in brainstorming workshops to identify a long list of additional strategies. The facilities can then choose from the list those interventions that zero in on their unique challenges.

http://www.psqh.com/novemberdecember-2008/91-november-december-2008/277-hospitals-collaborate-to-prevent-falls.html

2. Creating signs in the NATIVE LANGUAGES of your patients to help them AND their family members understand the things that can be done to reduce falls.  The Ohio State University Medical Center has an example of this for public use without copyright concerns, where they had the instructions in both English and Hindi.

http://www.healthinfotranslations.com/pdfDocs/PreventingfallsinthehospitalHdiFinal.pdf

3. Keeping current with Great Hospital Purchasing GPOs, such as Premier, and all of the resources that a GPO keeps on their website to help educate their hospitals.

http://www.premierinc.com/safety/topics/falls/

4. Staying Current by attending leading, cutting edge falls and patient safety conferences, such as the one that is sponsored by USF & the VA VISN 8 in Tampa, Florida each year in Clearwater Beach, Florida.  This will be their 11th Annual Conference on May 4-6, 2010.  I definitely attend as many as these as I can, and I’ve watched this one grow from 9 years ago to what it has become today.

Here’s a couple of links about it:

http://www1.va.gov/VISN8/PatientSafetyCenter/safePtHandling/default.asp

http://www.cme.hsc.usf.edu/falls/

5.  Posey Company Fall Prevention Education & Information - The Posey Company provides valuable information and resources for hospitals to use.  By just calling them on the telephone or even emailing the author of this article, they will have a well trained & knowledgeable representative contact you about the education information and fall prevention product solutions that can help your hospital.  By having representatives in hospitals daily, Posey learns what is working and not working, and offers educational webinars, online CEU training programs and product solutions.  Visit http://www.Posey.com/ for more information.

In wrapping up this guest blog post for Medical Nurse Training’s website,  by aligning yourself with leaders in the industry that are doing the research, staying on top of the research and creating new solutions for preventing hospital falls, your falls rates and hospital falls rates with injuries will significantly decrease!!  It does not happen over night, and you always have to remember, that it’s not a race, but it’s a marathon to find the right solutions and answers to help you and your hospital in preventing hospital falls!!
Wade Thomas is a Hospital Falls Consultant to hospitals primarily in the State of Florida.  He works to provide education, training, and fall prevention products that will help any hospital to decrease their fall rates and more importantly, their falls with injuries rates.  He attends the annual Patient Safety Conference in Clearwater Beach, Florida and also attends the State of Florida annual Florida Health Care Association show for nursing home directors and administrators.  To contact Mr. Thomas for more information on how he or one of his associates can work with your hospital, please email WadeThomas at AOL.com

Copyright 2010 - Wade M. Thomas & MedicalNurseTraining.com - Please feel free to share this article with your friends and colleagues.  Please leave the entire article and author’s biography box intact.  Thank You.

By:  Pat Devaney, President

       Medical Nurse Training, Inc.

The focus of this blog is to call attention to the risk of falls and new solutions in both education and technologies. To receive all the information available you can go to www.MedicalNurseTraining.com and www.SaferFalls.com

Center for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that over 60% of fatal falls occur in the home. Additionally the total cost of falls in 2010 is expected to be between 68 and 100 Billion Dollars.

Most of this cost and loss of life is completely preventable through new fall prevention, fall protection and safer falls education. Many of these medically significant events include hip fracture, head injury, fear of falling again, broken vertebrae and broken wrist. Much of this information is virtually unknown to the general public.

Over 44 million baby boomers live at home with an elderly sick parent according to The Caring Alliance. Another 25 million at risk elderly live alone and unprotected from devastating falls. The current economic conditions have exacerbated these numbers. Since life expectancy has continued to increase this situation is likely to become even more prevalent. The faller may need to move in with adult children and adult children often have to take time off work to care for at risk parents. The costs emotionally and physically to the person who falls and their families is enormous.

l  Annually there are approximately 370,000 hip fractures.

l  Falls are the major cause of 40% of nursing home admissions and subsequent costs to families.

l  Per year, of those admitted to a hospital only about 50 % will survive a serious fall.

l  Old age sets in with the first fall, mortality with the second.

l  Falls are the leading cause of accidental death.

l  More than 33% of adults 65 and older fall each year.

l  Of those who fall 20 to 30% suffer severe injuries. 

l  The U. S. life expectancy increased from 75.5 years in 1993 to 77.6 years in 2003.  These changes have resulted in a U. S. population with a greater proportion of older adults who are living with chronic disease, leaving them at great risk for falling and less likely to survive the injuries resulting from a fall.  (CDC, 2005)

l  Research shows that more than a third of all older adults fall each year and 10-20% of falls cause serious injuries such as fractures or head traumas.  (Stevens, 2005)

l  Injury from a fall is the 4th major cause of death in older adults.

l  Costs include hospital and nursing home care, doctors and other professional services, rehabilitation, community services, medical equipment, medications, changes that need to be made to the home and insurance processing.  (CDC, 2005)

l  The cost emotionally and physically to the person who fell and their families is enormous as well. 

l  The faller may need to move in with adult children, adult children may need to take time off of work to care for their parent. 

l  In short, many lives can be forever changed by a severe fall.  The quality of their life may never return to its pre-fall state.

l  Recurrent falls are a common reason for admission of previously independent elderly persons to long-term care institutions. 

l  Fear of falling and the post fall anxiety syndrome are also well recognized as negative consequences of falls. 

l  The loss of self-confidence to ambulate safely can result in self-imposed functional limitations.  (Brown, 1999)

The President of Medical Nurse Training, Mr. Devaney is available to speak to the new technologies and education for your program or for home utilization. Medical Nurse Training is the premier portal for training nurses and doctors utilizing a nationally known Geriatric Doctor, the Assistant Director of Nursing at Johns Hopkins and Patrick Devaney who has over 25 years experience lecturing on these topic to tens of thousands of nurses, doctors and healthcare facilities. Anyone who is above the age of 55 or has a relative, who is at risk for falls, is confused or agitated, has Alzheimer’s, or presents elopement risks at home will be very interested in this new material. This information will be invaluable to seniors and their families.

Mr. Devaney’s mother died as the result of an unnecessary hip fracture. This loss could have easily been prevented with one of these new devices or education techniques. Numerous lives have already been saved with these clinically proven devices.

Additionally, we have partnered with the leading manufacturers of these low cost fall prevention technologies to provide these fall products predominately available only through hospitals and nursing homes to the general public at institutional prices.

By going to www.MedicalNurseTraining.com you can get a broad overview of the types of programs we offer to the medical community, families, seniors and review our educational materials. We would welcome a discussion of how your family or your program and listeners/viewers will greatly benefit from this information. This piece will be of interest to most if not all. These medically sound approaches will eventually get attention and will reduce government costs in the Billions of dollars over the next few years. You can also review clinical references on this site. Thank you for reviewing this important material. We look forward to working with you for the appearance on your program.

Medical Nurse Training provides the latest on-line training to Doctors and Nurses on fall prevention and protection. This includes in-house education on devices that will reduce injury from falls and related deaths and on-line education for those concerned about falls at home.

Hip Protectors – High Impact – absorbing pads that help protect hip bones against injury from falls. About 320,000 people suffer a hip fracture every year.  These pads are built into brief’s, panties, sweat pants and sweat shorts. They can easily be laundered and re-used numerous times to help protect from falls. The use of these devices has been clinically proven to reduce fall injuries. Many individuals that experience a fall are afraid to continue normal activities like walking. These devices help these people resume a normal life. Hip Fracture is one of the number one causes of death in older individuals. Our experience shows that hip protectors are generally not known by the general public

Fall Alarms – Inexpensive bed and chair exit electronic monitors otherwise known as Fall Alarms, assist with the observation of patients and family members to help reduce falls and the potential for elopement from home or a facility. A variety of sensor accessories may be used including toileting sensors, bed/chair sensors, infrared sensors and self releasing sensors may be attached to the monitor to reduce risk. These alarms include a gentle voice reminder not to get up without assistance. Pendants to call caregivers when help is needed are also very useful.

Floor Cushions and Bath Mats – Certain areas of the home are very high risk for injury from falls like the bathroom. Special floor cushions and bath mats are designed to help reduce the impact from a fall and are frequently talked about in the clinical literature. These floor cushions are tri-fold in design, making them convenient to carry to areas requiring the most immediate protection.

Bathrooms are also very high risk zones. The sure step bath mat can be used to significantly reduce the impact of a fall. The mat is impervious to water and bacterial growth and can be custom cut to fit the contours of any bathroom or floor.

Please go to www.MedicalNurseTraining.com for more information on these programs and devices.

Author Pat Devaney, President Medical Nurse Training

We are pleased to announce a partnership with very reputable fall device manufacturers to provide lifesaving, at home products for fall prevention and protection at institutional prices. As of August 24^th, 2009, we are including these fall products under a new section consumer fall prevention devices. The www.MedicalNurseTraining.com  site will be linked to the product site www.SaferFalls.com which will include these unique, discounted fall devices. Very often we hear from Doctors and Nurses, “where can I obtain these protective devices for at risk friends and relatives?” Many of these products are virtually unknown to the general public. Now there are some new and very inexpensive devices for home use to significantly reduce these injuries and costs.

There are a large number of people that never recover from a hip fracture at home.  Additionally, there have been a tremendous number of situations where family members wander away from home. These new devices significantly reduce this risk. Fall related injuries are very costly in lives and over $100 billion yearly in unnecessary medical expenses.

The President of Medical Nurse Training, Mr. Devaney had a personal tragedy when his mother died as the result of an unnecessary hip fracture. This loss could have easily been prevented with one of these new devices. Numerous lives have already been saved with these clinically proven fall protection products. We have just partnered with the Posey Company, the leader in the field, to offer these fall products at a great discount.

Medical Nurse Training provides the latest on-line training to Doctors and Nurses on fall prevention and protection. This includes in-house education on devices that will reduce injury from falls and related deaths. We will be carrying this process forward to educate the non medical community to help avoid the costly risk of falls at home. Some of these tremendous new technologies include comfortable Hip Protectors, Wireless Pagers for caregivers at home, fall and exit alarms, medical grade floor cushions, and bath mats.

Hip Protectors – High Impact – absorbing pads that help protect hip bones against injury from falls. About 320,000 people suffer a hip fracture every year.  These pads are built into briefs, panties, sweat pants and sweat shorts. They can easily be laundered and re-used numerous times to help protect from falls. The use of these devices has been clinically proven to reduce injury. Many individuals that experience a fall are afraid to continue normal activities like walking. These devices help these people resume a normal life. Hip Fracture is one of the number one causes of death in older individuals. Our experience shows that hip protectors are generally not known by the general public

Fall Alarms – Inexpensive bed and chair exit electronic monitors otherwise known as Fall Alarms, assist with the observation of patients and family members to help reduce falls and the potential for elopement from home or a facility. A variety of sensor accessories may be used including toileting sensors, bed/chair sensors, infrared sensors and self releasing sensors may be attached to the monitor to reduce risk. These alarms include a gentle voice reminder not to get up without assistance. Many of these devices are unknown to the general public.

Floor Cushions and Bath Mats – Certain areas of the home are very high risk for injury from falls like the bathroom. Special floor cushions and bath mats are designed to help reduce the impact from a fall and are frequently talked about in the clinical literature. These floor cushions are tri-fold in design, making them convenient to carry to areas requiring the most immediate protection. Bathrooms are also very high risk zones. The sure step bath mat can be used to significantly reduce the impact of a fall. The mat is impervious to water and bacterial growth and can be custom cut to fit the contours of any bathroom or floor.

Please go to www.MedicalNurseTraining.com for more information on these programs and devices. A consumer section with numerous new fall prevention and protection devices will appear on the site shortly. This will include significant educational resources for the non medical community. In the meantime you are welcome to email us with your immediate needs.

Author: Pat Devaney

Date: 5-18-2009

This is to announce a tremendous saving in lives and medical costs of over 200 billion dollars yearly. Most of these savings can be achieved by reducing the risk of falls and protecting against the effect of falls particularly in the population now approaching 60 and above. New personal use technologies that are relatively unknown to some in the medical field and more often the public can easily eliminate these useless injuries and death.. National Center for Patient Safety recently recommended the use of these new approaches. We are receiving numerous requests to offer this information to the general public and we are willing to perform this public service.

The President of Medical Nurse Training, Mr. Devaney is available to speak to these new technologies and education for your program. Medical Nurse Training is the premier portal for training nurses and doctors utilizing a nationally known Geriatric Doctor, the Assistant Director of Nursing at Johns Hopkins and Patrick Devaney who has over 25 years of experience lecturing on these topic to tens of thousands of nurses, doctors and healthcare facilities. Anyone who is above the age of 55 or has a relative, who is at risk for falls, is confused or agitated, has Alzheimer’s, or presents elopement risks at home will be very interested in this new material.

Mr. Devaney’s mother died as the result of an unnecessary hip fracture. This loss could have easily been prevented with one of these new devices or education techniques. Numerous lives have already been saved with these clinically proven devices.

We have partnered with the leading manufacturers of these low cost medical technologies to provide these devices predominately available only through hospitals and nursing homes to the general public at an institutional price.

By going to www.MedicalNurseTraining.com you can get a broad overview of the types of programs we offer to the medical community and review our blogs. We would welcome a discussion of how your program and listeners/viewers will greatly benefit from this information. This piece will be of interest to most if not all. These medically sound approaches will eventually get attention and will reduce government costs in the trillions of dollars over the next 10 years. You can also review clinical references on this site.

Medical Nurse Training provides the latest on-line training to Doctors and Nurses on fall prevention and protection. This includes in-house education on devices that will reduce injury from falls and related deaths.

Hip Protectors – High Impact – absorbing pads that help protect hip bones against injury from falls. About 320,000 people suffer a hip fracture every year.  These pads are built into briefs, panties, sweat pants and sweat shorts. They can easily be laundered and re-used numerous times to help protect from falls. The use of these devices has been clinically proven to reduce injury. Many individuals that experience a fall are afraid to continue normal activities like walking. These devices help these people resume a normal life. Hip Fracture is one of the number one causes of death in older individuals. Our experience shows that hip protectors are generally not known by the general public

Fall Alarms – Inexpensive bed and chair exit electronic monitors otherwise known as Fall Alarms, assist with the observation of patients and family members to help reduce falls and the potential for elopement from home or a facility. A variety of sensor accessories may be used including toileting sensors, bed/chair sensors, infrared sensors and self releasing sensors may be attached to the monitor to reduce risk. These alarms include a gentle voice reminder not to get up without assistance. Many of these devices are unknown to the general public.

Floor Cushions and Bath Mats – Certain areas of the home are very high risk for injury from falls like the bathroom. Special floor cushions and bath mats are designed to help reduce the impact from a fall and are frequently talked about in the clinical literature. These floor cushions are tri-fold in design, making them convenient to carry to areas requiring the most immediate protection. Bathrooms are also very high risk zones. The sure step bath mat can be used to significantly reduce the impact of a fall. The mat is impervious to water and bacterial growth and can be custom cut to fit the contours of any bathroom or floor.

Please go to www.MedicalNurseTraining.com for more information on these programs and devices. A consumer section with numerous new fall prevention and protection devices will appear on the site shortly. In the meantime you are welcome to email us with your immediate needs.

Written By:  Patrick Devaney, Author & Contributor

Facilities have been struggling with developing successful in house falls programs current with Joint Commission Goal # 9  for 2009 . This also includes updating restraint policies current to the new CMS guidelines and Bed Safety Workgroup recommendations for bed safety. Many of these regulations require a full time regulatory interpreter to disseminate these complicated tools, falls and restraint assessment recommendations. Additionally, development of new policies and protocols is costly and very time consuming.

Why reinvent the wheel? The training program from www.MedicalNurseTraining.com includes all the information any facility requires to meet all of these challenges. The program includes restraint and falls protocols from such great facilities as Johns Hopkins, with in depth training tools to implement these programs to all staff. The program also includes a significant number of policies and procedures to fit any facilities needs.

The challenge was to bring all the information a hospital or long term care facility would require into one easy to use program with DVD or On-line accredited training and downloadable resources manual. The feedback from facilities has been incredible.

“Thank you for saving us so much time and effort, we had a great survey” are typical of the comments we have received. You can check it out for yourself and see clips of the program or view videos of attendee’s testimonials. I fell very confident that this is by far the best program I have ever seen for hospital and long term care fall, restraint and patient safety.

The difficulty with many programs continues to be they are not evidence based, they are out of date, they do not focus on identification of  patients or residents at risk for falls and do not focus enough on prediction of fall. Correlating fall injury rates to a performance improvement profile is discussed in detail. Included are numerous plans of corrective action if your facility is above the national benchmark for restraints or falls.

Many times injury from fall, particularly in view of the new Medicare reimbursement changes of  October 2008, can create a huge financial burden on facilities. There are numerous devices that significantly reduce harm from falls. These may include but are not limited to fall alarms, hip protectors, floor fall cushions, seating and positioning products, self releasing devices, alternatives to side rails and high fall risk patient and resident identifiers.

Many of these patient safety devices are discussed in detail in this program relative to standard of care. For a complete review of these types of devices I would suggest going to the Posey Company at www.posey.com to see all the devices available from a leader in the fields of restraint alternatives, bed safety, fall prevention, fall protection and patient safety.

The utilization of the national database of nursing quality indicators is reviewed in detail. This will help to reduce the effect of costly negative surveys to your facility. The use and application of a variety of  fall indicator scales like Dr. Morse Scale are reviewed for current relevance and efficacy.

A complete review of current root cause analysis is also included. The top root causes for falls have changed and include patient assessment, care planning, physical environment, alarm systems and communication into an evidence based protocol. We will continue to update the program with current reviews of all the relevant material to keep your facility up to date.

Thanks for taking the time to review this weeks blog and for your concern for better patient care.

Medical Nurse Training presents a one credit hour program on fall prevention and protection from Maria Cvach ADON at Johns Hopkins. This program includes in depth evidence based information on the very successful Johns Hopkins fall protocol and an implementation of a complete falls and bed safety program in an institutional setting. Many important variables are elaborated to crystallize the elements of a successful program. Alternatives to and the use of restraints are also discussed in detail in this offering.

Hospital fall related injuries are very costly. Many facilities incur legal costs well over one million dollars per year in fall related incidents. The human costs are even more devastating if you look at loss of life and lifetime costs associated with hip fractures. Many of these falls are totally preventable using the devices and protocols utilized and developed at Johns Hopkins. Annually 270,000 hip fractures are now associated with approximately $85,000 in lifetime costs. For those admitted to a facility following a hip fracture only about 50% survive. This online fall prevention program is an effective way to reduce these grim statistics.

Joint Commission guidelines require significant reductions in “the risk of patients and residents harm from falls.” One company that provides the types of devices recommended to reduce this risk is the J.T. Posey Company. I would encourage any facility or individual to visit their website www.posey.com for a great deal of educational and device offerings in the bed safety, fall prevention and fall protection area. For the most at risk patients the Posey Bed considered by Joint Commission as the least restrictive restraint may be a great alternative for at risk patients. Our understanding is that this device is now utilized by over 600 facilities to reduce fall risk. Maria Cvach describes the use of this device at Johns Hopkins.

Root causes and specific solutions for patient falls are also described in detail in this on line or DVD program. I like the flow of the program since it is predominately lecture video with side by side PowerPoint. Protocols and over 400 pages of other resources are also included. The effect of staffing levels, communication, staff orientation and training with real evidence based solutions are included. I would suggest caregivers take a good look at the clips and testimonials at the site www.MedicalNurseTraining.com to see the superb value to their facility.

As always care planning and organizational involvement are the essence of any successful fall program. Maria describes the best interventions to achieve the objectives of reducing risk and minimizing injury from falls. Practical ideas for the implementation and evaluation of these programs is discussed in an easy to understand format. Orientation and training of staff is a key element of the success of her program. Fall prevention is an ongoing training dilemma and Maria brings a great number of fresh ideas to your facility. Let’s see what we can all do to reduce hospital falls and falls in nursing homes.

 Expert Speaker # 3:

Pat Devaney, BA Psychology
Falls Consultant & Restraint Reduction Trainer
Medical Nurse Training, Inc.

Pat has taught thousands of programs on restraints, restraint reduction, bed safety, CMS and Joint Commission Patient Safety Guidelines in one and three hour ANA accredited speaking engagements.  Pat has been a consultant and trainer to numerous healthcare facilities, long term care and acute care associations.  These programs have been consolidated to be presented in a streamlined online learning experience.  His programs have been accredited on fall prevention, bed safety, restraints and restraint alternatives for over 12 years.  The feedback for his online accredited program has been exemplary.  Mr. Devaney has a personal interest in this program, as his mother passed away as a direct result of a hip fracture.

Mr. Devaney has worked as a consultant & trainer to the J. T. Posey Company, which is a leader in the development of devices developed for the topics discussed in the program.  Additionally he has worked as a principle trainer and advisor to Criticare Systems Inc., a leading provider of acute care monitoring equipment.  He also actively developed monitoring equipment for long term care as President of Emergency Services Inc. 

Our Next Post will be a brief overview of Mr. Devaney’s acute care online nurse training program and long term care nursing training program.  To learn more about this program, please visit www.MedicalNurseTraining.com