Signficance of hourly rounding in improving patient safety in geriatric population

Unintentional patient fall clinical economic burden cannot be contested. The increased incidences of geriatric patient falls combined with the impacts of nurse shortages results to increased staff workloads. In turn, the increased workloads are associated with noncompliance with patient safety interventions and basic falls preventive measures. The shortage of nurses, increased of patient acuity, and time constraints increase the probability of creating a stressful environments with low compliance of  fall prevention protocol, leading to fatal fall related injuries and mortality.

The observation at this healthcare facility is that the low staffing level increase risk for patient falls due to low adherence to patient safety protocols during patient care. Evidence based practice for fall prevention strategies are significant to nurse profession because they will significantly reduce unintentional patient fall incidences, and lower workloads that cause increased nurse burnout. Consequently, there will be effective care delivery and significantly reduce the incidence rates of unintentional patient falls and related injuries………….