Nurse Patient Ratio Analysis

In today’s fast paced healthcare environment there is constant struggle to provide the best and safe care to patients and at the same time keep the organization profitable. Nurse patient ratio is one of the areas in healthcare where this struggle is visualized on a regular basis. Nurse patient ratios need to be reevaluated because medicine has come a long way from twenty thirty years ago and patients are suffering from many comorbidities which makes it harder to safely care for patients while we are still using the nursing staffing grid from twenty thirty years ago. One of the adverse reaction to having high nurse patient ratio is keeping patients safe in an inpatient setting. Patient’s falls have been increasing year by year and many falls …show more content…
Not all falls are preventable but hospitals need to come up with ways to prevent the once they can. As a hospital we should be tracking fall rates of patients, review each case on its own merits, and come up with ways to reduce fall occurrences within our inpatient nursing units. There are four types of falls that occur in a hospital setting, anticipated physiological, accidental, unanticipated physiological and behavioral or intentional fall (Butcher, 2013). Not all fall are preventable but we can minimize the ones that are. Anticipated physiological falls are associated with patients that are confused, elderly with dementia or Alzheimer’s. For this population to minimize falls, bed alarms can be utilized but if the bed alarm is constantly going off then a bedside sitter needs to be available to sit with the patient because a nurse with high nurse patient ratio cannot always get to the room whenever a bed alarm rings. Accidental falls are associated with patient being tethered to Tubing’s, walking with IV pole, or tripping over cluttered room. For these patients, hourly rounding is best because every hour if a nursing team member goes in to check on the patient many falls can be reduced. Unanticipated physiological and behavioral falls are not preventable because in these situations any outcome is …show more content…
It does not matter if you are clinical person or not. If you see a call bell ring and you see a flashing light by the door, even if you are a food hostess you can at least go in the room and make sure that the patient is safe and relay the patient’s message to patients nurse, charge nurse or even the clinical technician. I propose having a charge nurse review all the patients in a given unit every shift identify high fall risk patients, advise all the nursing support staff of the specific rooms of high falls risk and implement a policy of “No walk away zone”. If a call bell is ringing and any staff member is close to the room has an obligation to answer the call bell regardless of whose patient it is and what your title is. If a fall occurs, there should be a “post fall Huddle” afterword’s so reflect on the fall and have a conversation about how it could have been prevented. Charge nurse should enter the type of fall into the database and also circumstances surrounding the fall. This information must be entered into the database the same shift because things can be left out or forgotten if not done the same shift. The unit manager can look at the data and come up with a plan to prevent similar types of falls in the future and education staff members on new techniques to prevent falls. According the Joint Commission the analysis of current data should be done regularly to help