Falls Project

Falls are a persistent and significant healthcare problem across the nation. This problem has increased as the population ages and elders are admitted to acute care hospitals. Hospitals have tried for decades to adopt and implement “best practices” to reduce falls. In 2014, the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) decided that fall prevention would be one of the top patient safety priorities. The fall rate at the time the project described below began had increased to 3.21 falls per 1,000 patient days, well above the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators benchmark of 2.91. To improve practice, the CNO commissioned an interprofessional team to develop a comprehensive evidence-based approach to fall prevention using the Evidence-Based Practice Improvement (EBPI) Model. This chapter describes how the EBPI model was used to design, implement, and sustain a successful fall prevention program, intuitively using the components of the EBPI Model.