EBP: Section D: Solution Description Health, Medicine Term Paper

EBP: Section D: Solution Description: Nurse-patient ratio to reduce patient falls

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Increasing the nurse-patient ratio is one way to improve nurse responsiveness and reduce the risk of patient falls, an indicator of quality care. Adequate staffing and increasing the nurse staffing ratios are associated with better delivery of care. This promotes patient engagement and responsiveness, which are also linked to patient satisfaction and reducing the risk of infections (Hirsbrunner et al., 2015). Implementing evidence-based practice project to improve the quality and safe patient care. Increased nurse-patient ratios will require more resources, but there are savings through fewer hospitalization costs, and Long-Term Care (LTC) patients will stay hospitalized for a shorter period (Staggs, Mion & Shorr, 2015). As such, the intervention is not too costly and is effective to prevent patient falls. LTC patients are less mobile than those who stay in hospitals for short periods of time, and there is a need to ensure that the environment is safe to reduce the risk of patient falls. The PICOT is “Does staffing by nurse-patient ratio vs. the current process decrease falls for LTC patients within three months of implementation?”

Patient safety is the minimization and prevention of adverse events attributable to adequate patient care, to guarantee the quality of health care. The organization has implemented various policies, programs and procedures to promote a culture of patient safety with reducing patient fall into one of the initiatives. Improving nurse staffing is one of the issues that has been explored to improve the quality of care (Falk & Wallin, 2016). The patient safety culture allows the organization’s administration and health practitioners to identify strengths and opportunities towards the continuous improvement of care (Everhart et al., 2014). Nurses are present in all phases of the care process and mostly have the closest contact with the patients during their stays in the hospital. The proposed solution is consistent with the aim of providing safe and quality care that is beneficial to patients, their families, and the community.

The expected outcome is that there will be reduced patient falls and patient safety as there will be a timely evaluation of the risk factors associated with patient falls when the nurse-patient ratio increases. The hospital environment should offer maximum safety features, and this does not include the environment, but also the presence of more and better-trained nurse staff. There are intrinsic, or patient risk factors like age, disabilities, mobilization and previous as well as environmental factors like bed rails, wet floors lack adequate bed alarms inappropriate clothes and shoes. The activities that are performed by nurses should be oriented towards preventing falls and associated injuries and disorders. Hospitals implement protocols to monitor patients, and the risk of falls and this is necessary to promote the