Assessment of the Risk Factor for Falls among Among inpatients Children at Al-Makassed Hospital
Date
2021-07-14
Authors
RanaKhaled Abed Raboh
رنا خالد عبد ربه
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Al-Quds University
Abstract
In the recent past, cases of fall related injuries among children have been on the rise. Environmental factors and age of the children has been pointed as some of the risk factors influencing fall related injuries in a non-hospital setting. Whether similar factors could influence pediatric falls in a hospital environment remains to be elucidated. Occurrence of inpatient falls has an impact on hospital budgets. Patients will require specialised treatment and readmission resulting in constraint on services. While the causes of fall in non-hospital environment are well documented, hospital related falls are poorly understood especially in Palestine. We hypothesized that the hospital environment factors such as presence of medication, diagnosis, health personnel as well as parental presence, time of day, age, and other patient characteristics were directly associated with inpatient pediatric fall. The purpose of the study was; a) to identify the risk level of falling down among the inpatient children in the pediatrics departments at Al Makassed Hospital, b) to identify the most common cause of falling down among the inpatient children in the pediatrics departments of the hospital and c) to investigate the effect of falling down and demographic data among the inpatient children in the pediatric departments of the hospital. To address these objectives, 116 pediatric falls that had been documented during hospitalization at Al Makassed Hospital were selected for retrospective chart review. A retrospective and descriptive study design study was done to review the prevalence of inpatient pediatric bed falling in the pediatrics department at Al Makassed Hospital. The Humpty
Dumpty Falls Scale (HDFS) was used to determine the child’s risk for falling. This tool was often used for assessment by nursing staff when patients are hospitalized, as the test scores are updated daily depending on the patient's condition.
Sources of Data
A retrospective and descriptive study design descriptive retrospective study was used to review the prevalence and level of statistical levels differences between variables. The independent variables were age, gender, hospital environment; time of day, patient characteristics, related injuries and risk factors, while the dependent variable was inpatient fall injury. To address these objectives, 116 pediatric falls that had been documented during hospitalization at Al Makassed Hospital were selected for retrospective chart review and used the Humpty Dumpty Falls Scale (HDFS) to determine the child’s risk for falling. This tool was often used for assessment by nursing staff when patients are hospitalized, as the test scores are updated daily depending on the patient's condition.
Collected data were analyzed in SPSS to obtain basic characteristics of inpatient children that fell. A Z-score was performed todiscover the potential risk factors for inpatient fall., while a chi-Square (X2) test was used to identify the relationship between thesocio-demographic variables and the location of fall and to identify the level of risk factor of falling down at an alpha of 0.05 variables in which p<.05 was considered significant.