Nursing Commons^™

Preventing Falls-Interventions In Geriatric Psychiatry Patients: An Overview Of Current Literature, Samantha Beckwith

Maine Medical Center

PREVENTING FALLS-INTERVENTIONS IN GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRY PATIENTS: AN OVERVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE

Samantha Beckwith, BSN, RN, PMH-BC, P6

Background: The Inpatient Psychiatry unit at Maine Medical Center (P6) is a 21-bed unit specializing in geriatric and medical psychiatry. The majority of patients have a primary diagnosis of Dementia with Behavioral Disturbance. The unit features 12 double occupancy rooms and one single occupancy room, as well as a large activity room. Patients participate in a therapeutic milieu in which they are encouraged to interact with other patients in common areas and ambulate around the unit. The average number of patients is 19.6 …

Increasing Advanced Care Planning In An Ambulatory Care Setting, Jennifer Aronson, Elizabeth Eisenhardt, Ruth Hanselman, Suneela Nayak, Stephen Tyzik, Amy Sparks

Operations Transformation

Maine is experiencing an increasing percentage of its population being over 65 years old. Advanced Care Planning (ACP) is an important part of this aging population medical care so those ends of life preferences are known well in advance. An adult internal medicine clinic in a large academic tertiary medical center decided to create a performance improvement project that addressed ACP with embedded workflows.

The goal of this project was to have a minimum of 40% of patients 65 or older have an Advanced Care Directive or Serious Illness Conversation documented in EPIC.

Baseline metrics demonstrated that ACP discussion rates …

Patient Fall Prevention, R9 West Cardiovascular, Cathy Palleschi, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Stephen Tyzik

Maine Medical Center

PATIENT FALL PREVENTION STRATEGIES IN AN ACUTE HOSPITAL

Every year in the United States, hundreds of thousands of patients fall resulting in injury. Injured patients often require prolonged hospital stays and a resultant increase in medical costs.

The purpose of this study was to identify the current state of fall prevention strategies on a hospital inpatient acute care cardiac unit. Through a root cause analysis, some deficiencies were identified and a process improvement plan was implemented.

Several positive outcomes were attained as a result of the countermeasures initiated. Patient falls per month and total waste in dollars saw a decline …

Identification Strategies For The Very High Fall Risk Patient In An Acute Inpatient Psychiatric Unit, P6 Inpatient Geri-Med Psychiatry, Haley Pelletier, Suneela Nayak, Stephen Tyzik, Ruth Hanselman

Maine Medical Center

Patients falling as a result of geriatric and psychiatric impairments are at a much higher risk than the average patient population. An acute care inpatient psychiatric team used baseline metrics to demonstrate increasing fall rates per month that surpassed the unit’s target number. As a result, a quality improvement project around falls was felt to be warranted.

The overall goal of this study was to improve patient safety by reducing falls for their very high risk fall population. A root cause analysis determined that this population was not being properly identified and several tools were developed and employed to better …