Older, in hospital and confused - The value of nursing care in preventing falls in older people with cognitive impairment

Abstract

Falls and injury from falls are internationally recognised as an important health and safety matter for hospitals today and an indicator of the quality of nursing care (ANA, 2012, Burston et al., 2014). In the United States, the prevalence of in-hospital falls in a study of 315,817 falls over a 27 month period was 3.56 falls/1000 patient days, with 26.1% of these falls resulting in an injury (Bouldin et al., 2013). In England and Wales, over 280,000 hospital falls are reported each year (NPSA, 2010). And, in one Australian report, 10% of patient days for people over the age of 65 years were attributable to falls injury, reflecting 1.4 million patient days over the year, a doubling from 0.7 million in ten years earlier (AIHW, 2013).