• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.33-40
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• 2018

Purpose: The main objective of this paper is, to assess environment, care process, and patient-related factors associated with patient falls. The study also aims at identifying various factors that would affect inpatient falls and, therefore, helping both caregivers and designers contribute to better prevent inpatient falls in their own areas of expertise. Methods: A retrospective analysis of inpatient falls that occurred in the unit of General Medicine in the United States has been conducted and environment, care process, patient-related factors associated with those falls have been analyzed at the same time. Results: The study identified several factors associated with inpatient falls. They range from environmental factors to care process- and patient-related factors. Patient visibility and patient accessibility can matter to patient falls and where those falls occur, along with patient days per room, the percentage of patient days with high fall risk patients per room, the percentage of high fall risk patients per room. Implications: The findings of the study can provide design implications that can be incorporated into design process and design decisions to promote fall prevention in inpatient care units. Inpatient falls can be effectively reduced when caregivers and designers work together to understand the complex nature of inpatient falls and the importance of multidisplinary efforts among various experts in the areas of healthcare.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.61-70
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• 2021

Purpose: The study aims at identifying patient-related and environmental factors associated with an increased risk of falling and, therefore, both caregivers and designers can be aware of fall risk factors and can contribute to prevent inpatient falls in their own areas of expertise. Methods: A case-control study has been conducted, utilizing patient data and physical environmental data in the unit of General Medicine in the United States. The case-control study investigated data about patients who had suffered falls as well as patients with similar characteristics (e.g., age, gender, and diagnosis) who did not suffer falls. Results: The study identified both patient-related and physical environmental factors associated with inpatient falls. Morse fall risk score, patient visibility, and patient accessibilityB were identified as significant predictors to inpatient falls, when controlling for other significant variables. Implications: The findings of the study can provide implications to both caregivers and healthcare and hospital environment designers. Caregivers should give special attention to patients with high Morse Fall Risk Scores to prevent inpatient falls. Designers also need to examine and to fine-tune the unit layout of inpatient care units to maximize each patient room's patient visibility from the rest of the unit and patient accessibilityB from working areas of nurses.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2023

Background: Like many other countries, falls and related injuries in older adults are great concerns in South Korea. In particular, falls are common in medical institutions, often causing the increase of the length of hospitalization. Objects: The purpose of this review was to help understand and address falls in hospitalized individuals in South Korea. Methods: The review was conducted on literature published in Korean from 2010 to 2022, searched in the Korea Citation Index and PubMed. Keywords used for the search were as follows: falls, fall risk, fall risk assessment, hospital, inpatient, intervention, Korea, and prevention. Results: A total of 54 articles were found and reviewed. The most common place of fall accidents was the inpatient room, where there were many cases of falls while walking. Loss of balance was the most common cause of falls, and many falls occurred in patients admitted to the internal medicine. Furthermore, a risk of falling increased with the type of medications taken. In terms of tools to assess patients' fall risk, the Morse Fall Scale (MFS) was commonly used. Patient-specific fall prevention activities were common to address falls, and they decreased the frequency of falls and the fear of falling. Factors influencing the effectiveness of the fall prevention activities included attitudes toward falls, education, environmental factors, patient safety culture, and self-efficacy in preventing falls. Conclusion: Our results should help understand and address falls and injuries in medical institutions.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Fundamentals of Nursing
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.106-117
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• 2017

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify nurses' experience of falls by inpatients. Methods: From December 30, 2015 to February 22, 2016 data were collected through in-depth individual interviews and analyzed using Colaizzi's phenomenological method. Participants were 11 clinical nurses and 2 head nurses. Results: Nurses' experience related to inpatients' falls were categorized as follows: 'emotional impact after falls', 'responsibility for falls', 'changes after experience of falls', 'burden of reporting falls', 'difficulty in preventing falls', 'seeking new strategies for fall prevention' Conclusion: The findings from this study suggest that there is a need to develop programs to help nurses overcome the emotional impact of falls. Also education should be provided to patients, caregivers and health providers in order to prevent falls and improve patient safety.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.2-14
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• 2018

Purpose: The objective of this study was to report the incidence of falls in hospitals and analyze the risk factors for falls. Methods: This study used data on 1,216 patients who experienced falls from 2015 to 2017 during their hospitalization. The data was collected from the falls incident reports and patient' electronic medical record of hospital. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics using Chi-square test, Fisher's exact test and multiple Poisson regression analysis with the SAS 9.4 Results: The incidence of falls was 1.38 per 1,000 patients days (2015), 1.81 per 1,000patients days (2016) and 1.99 per 1,000patients days (2017). The incidence of injury caused by falls (level III~V) was 0.05 per 1,000patients days (2015), 0.04 per 1,000patients days (2016) and 0.06 per 1,000patients days (2017). The largest number of falls occurred during night shift (42.5%), specifically in the patients' room (70.8%), and medical unit (66.0%). Average age of fallers was 69.1 years and 61.7% of them were older than 71 years. CCI and the patient's department have statistically significant differences in injury or injury levels from falls, but the integrated nursing care services had no significant difference in injury or injury levels from falls. Conclusion: The result of this study can be used as a reference for establishing a fall prevention strategy for hospitalized patients by presenting index values such as the fall rate.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.372-383
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efforts of Knowledge, Attitude and Perceptions of Patient Safety Culture on Fall Prevention Activities in Mental Hospital Nurses. This study is a descriptive research study of 153 nurses working in Busan and Gyeongnam mental health hospitals, the data were collected from April 4 to December 31, 2018. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS/win 24.0 program, which included t-test, ANOVA and multiple regression analysis. As a result, The attitude toward falls differed depending on subject's license or qualifications, the higher the education level. The higher the level of perceptions of patient safety culture, and the higher the work experience, the more prevention activities toward falls. The higher the perception of patient safety culture, the higher the attitude toward falls. The higher the prevention activities toward falls, the higher the attitude of falls and the perceptions of safety culture. As a result of multiple regression analysis of factors affecting Knowledge, Attitude and Perceptions of Patient Safety Culture on Fall Prevention Activities were 12.5%. Therefore, in order to promote fall prevention activities of mental hospital nurses, the knowledge needs to be expanded through continuous education. Education programs should be developed and provided to change attitudes toward falls. and At the hospital organization level, a wide range of support is required, including changes in the overall human and institutional environment for safety.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.273-280
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• 2014

Objectives: To evaluate the occurrence of patient adverse events in Korean hospitals as perceived by nurses and examine the correlation between patient adverse events with the nurse practice environment at nurse and hospital level. Methods: In total, 3096 nurses working in 60 general inpatient hospital units were included. A two-level logistic regression analysis was performed. Results: At the hospital level, patient adverse events included patient falls (60.5%), nosocomial infections (51.7%), pressure sores (42.6%) and medication errors (33.3%). Among the hospital-level explanatory variables associated with the nursing practice environment, 'physician-nurse relationship' correlated with medication errors while 'education for improving quality of care' affected patient falls. Conclusions: The doctor-nurse relationship and access to education that can improve the quality of care at the hospital level may help decrease the occurrence of patient adverse events.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.382-390
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• 2018

A major accident occurring on the bed is falls that occur during at times when the care of nurses or protectors is inadequate, which is fatal to patients or the elderly. In particular, Enuresis or sleepiness caused by sleep apnea increases the risk of falls. Therefore, it is very important to detect falls and sleep apnea of patients without infringing privacy in the bed to patient's safety and accident prevention. In this paper, we reviewed the technologies developed for bed monitoring and implemented a non-intrusive monitoring system. The Occupancy Sensor allows the temperature of the bed and surrounding area to be extracted to enable track of the patient's motion. The Doppler Radar detects the patient's movements at normal times and the respiration state when patients have no movement during sleeping. It is specially designed for real-time monitoring of falling and respiration during sleeping through contactless multi-sensing while solving patient's privacy problems.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.202-210
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• 2017

Purpose: In this study an investigation was done of injuries from inpatient falls and diagnostic tests and treatment after falls to identify what factors affect the occurrence of injury from inpatient falls in a tertiary hospital. Methods: Data for this cross-sectional study were retrieved for 428 fall events from data reported between January 1 and December 31, 2015 and were retrieved from the patient-safety reporting system in the hospital's electronic health records. A multivariate logistic regression model was developed with STATA 13.0. Results: Of the patients, 197 (46.0%) had physical injuries due to falls, 119 (27.8%) were given further diagnostic tests, and 358 (83.6%) received treatment including close observation after inpatient falls. Logistic-regression results identified that age, department, and risk factors had significant impact on injuries from falls. Conclusion: Findings indicate that to reduce the severity of injury after inpatient falls, each hospital should regularly evaluate identified factors, design fall-prevention practices specialized for elders and vulnerable patients, and initiate environmental and equipment innovations.

• Journal of Korean Critical Care Nursing
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.57-70
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• 2019

Purpose : The purpose of this study was to identify the risk factors for falls in tertiary hospital inpatients and to suggest data for developing a nursing intervention program for preventing falls. Methods: Data were collected between January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2017. Kaplan-Meier estimation was used to measure the survival rate, and the log-rank test was used for the differences between the fall group and the non-fall group. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to identify the risk factors for falls. Results: The incidence rate of falls for the inpatients was 1.2 cases per 1,000 days of hospitalization. The risk factors for falls were more likely to be found among those who were aged ${\geq}81$, had not undergone surgery, had poor joint motion, had unsteady gait, needed help or supervision, used assistive devices, had comorbidity, and took at least two drugs. Conclusion: For the inpatients, the risk factors for falls included age, surgery, comorbidity, medication that could change mobility, joint motion, and use of patient care equipment. It is necessary to give special attention to inpatients who have any of these risk factors and to develop a falls risk assessment tool.