Tuesday September 29, 2015 Falls Week 1

Falls-

Yesterday I introduced an abbreviation important to falls MAE.  Because I started with that abbreviation we're going to work backwards from the abbreviation and the after affects of a fall to the causes.

So the client is already on the floor. They've fallen. Too late to prevent the fall, cause it's happened. What needs to happen next.

For today the following scenario is going to be discussed:

Nurse heard patient calling out.  Nurse went to room and found patient on the floor. Patient unable to tell nurse how patient ended up on the floor. Pt. MAE. Pt assisted back to bed and physician notified. NNO at this time.

What happened, or what happens:

The nurse heard the patient call out, she went into the room to check on the patient. The nurse asked the patient what happened.  The nurse should have assessed the patient to ensure that the patient could move all extremities (MAE) within normal limits for the patient. It appears that she saw evidence of that, but did not necessarily assess for the ability to move all extremities. After she saw that the patient had not been visibly injured at this time, the patient was assisted back to bed.

This is a fairly straight forward version of what I see when a patient falls.  There are a ton of things that could go wrong with this scenario, even in my little note. Using a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant can help identify those things.