Nursing Administration Commons^™

Patient Care Sitter Reduction And Fall Safety Improvement, Timothy J. Bock

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

The financial constraints imposed upon operational budgets by the frequent use of patient care sitters is well known among hospital leadership. Despite the high labor costs associated with direct and continuous observation, this intervention is routinely deployed by frontline care teams in an effort to preserve patients from harm, particularly from accidental falls. This reality creates an opportunity where significant budget savings can be achieved by supplanting the use of patient care sitters with more effective fall prevention strategies. This quality improvement (QI) project implemented a non-psychiatric sitter reduction and fall prevention initiative in two high volume adult acute care …