High Cases of Falls that Cause Injuries among Elderly Patients in the Wards

Quality Improvement Proposal
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Quality Improvement Proposal
The problem to be addressed in this scenario is the high cases of falls that cause injuries among elderly patients in the wards. A substantial number of elderly patients have been experiencing falls due to poor communication between them and the nurses. In most cases, such falls result in the patient visiting the emergency room or getting additional treatment. In other cases, the fall can leave the elderly patient incapacitated for a particular period (Singh, Craven, Flett, Kerry, Jaglal, Silver & Musselman, 2019). This issue has become a major concern because it has played a substantial role in ruining the hospital's reputation regarding the quality of health care provided. Some patients no longer feel safe while receiving medical attention at the hospital and are afraid of treating other injuries that they got while in the hospital. Some patients tend to be impatient when they call a nurse to help them get out of bed. In turn, the patients risk falling as they help themselves out of bed. In other cases, some nurses tend to be reluctant to respond to the patient’s call, resulting in the patient falling. Some of the communication devices used to facilitate communication between the nurses and the patients are faulty, resulting in delays (Radecki, Reynolds & Kara, 2018). Such delays play a major role in causing accidents among the patients, especially when the patient wants to visit the washroom. Another factor facilitating the falls is that some patients ignore the nurses' directions. The nurses are trained to offer good quality health care to the patients. This means that they understand the dos and don'ts of recuperating patients. Hence, if a patient ignores the directions offered by the nurse, they are likely to get into problems such as falling.
A quality improvement initiative would be important in this area because it will increase the quality of healthcare offered to the patients. If the initiative is implemented, the number of falls would be highly reduced. In turn, the hospital would have a good reputation, and patients would be willing to visit it for medical attention. The hospital management has the duty to ensure that the patients receive the best healthcare quality. When patients visit the hospital, they aim at getting better rather than going home with more injuries. Hence, the patient needs to be assured that the hospital is capable of providing good quality health care and that the patients are in a safe environment. A quality improvement initiative would play a substantial role in improving the patient satisfaction rate. The expected outcome of the quality improvement initiative would be a reduction in the number of falls among elderly patients. The hospital already has a poor reputation when it comes to the treatment and care of elderly patients. However, the quality improvement initiative would help mend such a reputation to build trust in society. If the hospital builds trust in society, it will attract more patients, and this means it would make more profits to keep its operations running.
The previous research carried out in the hospit...