Identify factors that may cause or contribute to injury from a fall in order to enhance the patient, family, and caregiver awareness of the risks.- Improve environmental safety factors as needed. Doing frequent assessments of patient's environment is necessary to make sure new risks have not occurred.
- Assess patient's ability to use call bell or other safety emergency system. Remove anything from the environment that will increase the risk of falls; for example, throw rugs, cords, furniture blocking the patient's path to the bathroom. Patient's immediate environment must be reviewed frequently to prevent unnecessary falls.
Teach patient and family about the need for safe illumination. Advise patient to wear sunglasses when outside to reduce glare. Suggest the use of contrasting colors in household furnishings to enable patient to distinguish difference in things when walking and sitting.
For patients with hearing loss, encourage the use of a hearing aid to minimize hearing deficit.- Teach patient with unstable gait the proper use of assistive devices. Many patients never learn to use canes, crutches, and so on, properly to decrease the potential for falling.
- Review medications with patient and family. Help patient understand which medications put patient at greater risk for falls. Knowing the risk may help patient take more care in moving about. It may also call for reviewing with the primary care physician. Two or more medications taken by a patient puts the patient at higher risk. Many medications taken by the elderly can cause dizziness, sleepiness, lowered blood pressure, and confusion. Without sufficient instructions, patient may be at a higher risk for falls.
Provide additional patient education for household safety. Refer patient to appropriate resources (such as police, fire, home health nurses) for safety education. There is interest in the community for educating the elderly in the area of fall prevention. Many hospitalizations of elderly people because of trauma are caused by falls.
Suggested NIC Interventions
Fall Prevention; Environmental Management: Safety; Risk Identification; Medication Management; Exercise Therapy: Balance |