American Nurse Today

Assessing and documenting patient restraint incidents

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Restraining a patient is considered a high-risk intervention by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, The Joint Commission (TJC), and various state regulatory agencies, so healthcare pro­viders must carefully assess and document the patient’s condition. Assessing the patient’s medical condition Review the patient’s medical record for preexisting conditions that can cause behavioral changes—for instance, … Read more

Fall prevention: A contract with patients and families

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Editor’s note: This is the second of three case studies describing success stories in preventing falls and injuries from falls. The series is brought to you by TIDI. Watch for the next case study in the November issue of American Nurse Today. When hospital patients fall and suffer an injury, family members perceive that nurses and other hospital staff aren’t paying … Read more

Fall prevention: The little things can make a big difference

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In 2014, a multidisciplinary task force at Central Maine Medical Center (CMMC) in Lewiston created a fall-reduction program flexible enough to be customized to each unit’s medical specialty. The team chose the fall-prevention toolkit from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as the best-practice guide against which to evaluate CMMC’s program. A comprehensive collection of best … Read more

Hook-and-loop alarm belt: A vital component in a fall-prevention toolkit

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Editor’s note: This is one in a series of recurring case studies describing success stories in preventing falls and injuries from falls. The series is brought to you by Posey. Watch for the next case study in the March issue of American Nurse Today. In 2012, Yale New Haven Hospital’s fall-prevention charter noted a hospital-wide increase … Read more

Self-releasing alarm belts: It takes two

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Patient falls from chairs are increasing at an alarming rate: What can a hospital’s nursing staff do to stop this trend? That was the challenge faced by unit leaders of the Center for Rehabilitation at Wilmington Hospital. Notification that falls were increasing came as a surprise to us. Just 2 years earlier, we had lowered our … Read more

Fall prevention safety bundle: Collaboration leads to fewer falls

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At St. Joseph’s Hospital and Health Center in Syracuse, NY, we’re committed to providing a safe, comfortable, caring environment for our patients. We believe all patients deserve to be cared for in the most humane way possible to preserve their dignity and individual rights. This means ensuring our patients’ physical safety, including preventing injuries from falls, during a hospital stay.

Central to our fall prevention program is the hospital’s patient safety care bundle. We found that bundling (standardizing) fall prevention practices prevents more falls than nonbundling or variable approaches. We also learned that involving all unit and house-wide staff in this approach inspires greater buy-in and participation and fosters best practices.

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Enclosure bed: A tool for calming agitated patients

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By Dawn Walters, MS, RN, Vice-President of Behavioral Health and Rehabilitation Services Erie County Medical Center, Buffalo, New York As told to Janet Boivin, BSN, RN

At Erie County Medical Center, we’ve found enclosure beds to be an effective means to decrease stimulation for highly agitated patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) who may injure themselves. The beds help calm patients with TBI or those who are cognitively impaired.   

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Splash safety—Protecting your eyes, Part I

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Authors: Amber Hogan Mitchell, DrPH, MPH, CPH and Linda Powell, MSN, RN, FNP

Take the time to protect your eyes from pathogens.

Takeaways:

  • Nurses sustain the largest percentage of blood and body fluid exposures (BBFE) in acute-care settings in the United States.
  • From 50% to 60% of splashes that touch unprotected skin are blood or body fluids visibly contaminated with blood; 83.4% occur to the nurse’s face and 66.7% occur to their eyes.
  • Of those nurses reporting any kind of BBFE, only 8.1% said they were wearing eye protection.
  • Eye protection should be used whenever exposure to body fluids or infectious viruses and bacteria can occur, not just when exposure is likely to occur.

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Categories PPE

Splash safety—Protecting your eyes, Part 2

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Authors: Amber Hogan Mitchell, DrPH, MPH, CPH and Linda Powell, MSN, RN, FNP

Learn how to reduce the risk and what to do if an injury occurs.

Takeaways:

  • Preventing blood and body fluid exposures depends on surveillance, ongoing education, and adherence to a hierarchy of controls, such as personal protective equipment.
  • The estimated cost of each eye exposure incident is more than $1,000.
  • To build the best interventional programs, detailed information is needed so that targeted approaches can be used to avoid recurrence.

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Categories PPE