Happy first day of autumn! Let’s have some fall talk.

If you spend any time in the acute care setting, you’ll be inundated with signs of fall precautions: yellow alert armbands, yellow nonslip socks, yellow signs on patient room doors, and of course the constant ringing of bed alarms.

It appears that hospitals put a lot of effort into fall prevention, and understandably so—falls cost hospitals money. These costs include tests and procedures that aren’t covered by insurance, increased length of stay while the patient recovers, and lawsuits from injured patients or from their families.

Checking boxes vs. individual patient needs.

However, the current approach of applying all precautions to all patients at risk for falling isn’t supported by research, and may decrease patient satisfaction. Sometimes it seems more focus is put on checking boxes about having prevention strategies in place than on the actual patient’s preferences or needs. For example, a former patient told me about a time she was in the bathroom of her hospital room and felt lightheaded. Rather than risk falling, she eased herself to the floor and hit the call bell for assistance to get back to bed. Upon finding her on the floor, the staff were so focused on filling out an incident report and assessing her for injury that they ignored her attempts to explain what actually happened.

The ‘next era’ in fall reduction.