News and presentations from today's conference focusing on reducing inpatient falls, and harm from inpatient falls.
Driving improvement through national guidance, national and local audit: Gaining insight from inpatient falls
Dr Julie Whitney Clinical Lead, National Audit of Inpatient Falls Physiotherapist & NIHR Clinical Lecturer King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• findings from the latest 2023 National Audit of Inpatient Falls report
• focusing on patients who sustain a hip fracture while in hospital
• effective multifactorial falls risk assessment
• gaining insight from inpatient falls (GIIF) and linking with the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF)
Julie gave an update on national guidance and evidence. She said the latest data shows 1/4 million falls happen in inpatient settings, and harm is more common in the over 85's which is why the focus is on hip fracture. She detailed how the evidence on falls and hip fractures varies in quality but it there is strong evidence fro supporting patients and families. The World Falls guidelines recommend everyone in hospital over 65 is considered at high risk of falls, and national audit benchmarking is based on all who sustained a hip/femoral fracture age 60+, but this is going to change to all inpatient fractures and head injuries.
The focus will shift to avoiding deconditioning, Julie said we shouldn't be stopping people from moving to keep them safe. We need to move away from preventing falls and risk assessment, we need to make sure people are fit to move. We change to "Multifactorial Assessment to optimise Safe Activity" (MASA) from next year. There will also be work with NHFD to improve assessment in patients and those having rehabilitation for hip facture. Julie finished presentation with a look at quality improvement, saying it is important that we use the data.
Gaining insight from falls, human factors and linking with PSIRF
Dr Samantha Machen Head of Patient Safety Incident Response & Associate Director of Patient Safety, University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust
• gaining Insight from Falls
• reporting and investigation of inpatient falls – changes with the introduction of PSIRF
• how a human factors approach can improve falls prevention
• falls investigation and learning from falls that lead to severe harm including the hot debrief and after-action reviews
Thank you to our Exhibitors today:
