Effectiveness Of Using Bed Essay

The article aims to determine the effectiveness of using bed and bedside chair sensors in lowering the incidences of falls in three elderly care wards. The research was conducted over a two-year period, which comprises of a one-year pre-observational approach followed by another year of applying intervention in a Medical Centre in the UK. The study was approved by the local research ethics committee under Mental Capacity Acts of England. The study recruited newly admitted elderly patients from three medical wards within 24 hours. Additionally, the authors excluded participants who are death and dying and permanently bed bound. There were 918 participants in the control group that will not be using sensors and 921 patients in the intervention group will have sensors on their bed and chair. Additionally, randomisation was done by a web-based service to reduce bias and the participants were given free will to withdraw at any point …show more content…
Consequently, when the patient leaves the bed or chair, it automatically transmits signals to the radio pager that alert nursing staff that the patient might be on the floor and had fallen from the chair or bed. The nursing staff was required to complete an incident report form for data collection. The study revealed that using sensor system for bed and bedside chair and radio pagers were not successful in reducing the numbers of bedside falls rate and it is not cost effective. Furthermore, the author outline that radio paging system that notifies the nurses if the patient leaves the bed or chair does is insignificant. In fact, there were 85 incidences of bedside falls in the intervention group compared with 83 falls in the control group. The study is useful to conclude that bed and bedside chair sensor as a single approach does not lower the incidences of