Download

Download Full Text (316 KB)

Keywords

fall prevention, hospitalization, falls, injuries

Disciplines

Nursing

Description

There are 700,000 to 1,000,000 patient falls each year in U.S. hospitals, 35% of those resulting in patient injuries per year, costing the health industry $34 billion a year (MarketScale, 2020), resulting in increasing patients' hospitalization duration and placing nursing staff on edge. While protecting patient autonomy and encouraging independence, safety in the form of fall prevention remains a top priority among staff in the hospital system. Fall prevention can be grouped into three categories: education, risk assessment, and interventions. This formula can help patients and staff work together to increase safety and lower healthcare costs. Proactive toileting assesses a patient's need to use the bathroom regularly. This could be done simply by asking the patient if they need to use the toilet or implementing a set schedule to get patients up and placing them on the toilet to encourage voiding and regularity.

According to a study done at Saint Catherine Hospital in East Chicago, the majority of falls had occurred because of patients' need to go to the bathroom. To better serve their patients, they started implementing proactive toileting, which has reduced falls and urged patients to address their other needs at the scheduled time, allowing for care clustering and more healing time (Swenson et al., 2019). In another study. an inpatient oncology unit ran a study implementing proactive toileting when the unit was performing low on falls and fall indicators. They found that asking the patient, instead of teaching them, would still lead to falls because patients would rather decline to go at that time only to fall later, getting up without help, or the patient would not want to bother staff and therefore decline the toilet at that time altogether (Schmutter & St Fleur-Delbrune, 2021).

Publication Date

5-6-2024

Comments

Nurses Week at Corewell Health William Beaumont University Hospital, Royal Oak, MI, May 6-12, 2024.

Proactive Toileting for Proactive Fall Prevention

Share

COinS