The proposed research design allows for the measurement and comparison of fall prevention programs versus standard care measures and their effectiveness in the reduction of falls in dementia patients 65 years or older, in acute care facilities. Patients’ will be 65 years old with diagnosed dementia and will be randomly selected and placed into either a control group or the experimental group. The experimental group will utilize a fall prevention program that builds on standard care measures. The fall prevention program will assess patient risks for falls, utilize fall risk signs and bracelets, bed and chair alarms, frequent patient rounds, medication evaluations and multidiscipline communication and education on fall prevention …show more content…
Langford and Young (2013) discuss a number of ways in which reliability and validity issues of quantitative research can be addressed. This study has been designed to incorporate the necessary measures to address these issues. To avoid bias in the data collection and analysis, the dependability of the instruments will examine internal consistency, stability, and equivalence through both descriptive and inferential statistics as well as central tendency measures of nominal and ordinal data sets collected throughout this study (Langford & Young, 2013). The proposed random sampling and criteria can be used on all patients supporting the reliability of the test design. The measurement of whether or not falls occur while patients implemented fall prevention programs are in place indicates validity in the research design. Generalizability can be established because all implementations can be utilized on any person in the specified …show more content…
(2013), theses studies showed a variety of gaps in currently research related to dementia patients and fall prevention programs. Many of the studies identified gaps in standard care precautions being carried out by multidisciplinary staff prior to the implementation of fall prevention programs. As defined by Healey and Darowski (2012) clinical audits suggest that fall prevention in hospital settings fell short of the best practices including some of the basic care methods such as placing the call light within reach to lowering the bed to its lowest position. Theses methods are part of universal standard care measures for all patients. Fall prevention program effectiveness is hard to measure if standard care measures are not utilized in practice. The results of this study will be based on staff compliance with safety care measures assigned to each patient. All patients will receive standard care measures and a sample population will have a fall prevention program that is integrated into their basic care plan. This will allow for proper evaluation of the effectiveness of fall prevention programs in dementia patients 65 years or older. Other gaps in previous studies resulted from high nursing staff turnovers, inadequate communication, and no universal risk assessment tool (Dean, 2012). DeVol (2013) used