Nurse-led fall prevention programs in acute care settings: An integrative review

TL;DR

This review examines nurse-led fall prevention programs in hospitals and finds that using multiple strategies is more effective than single approaches.

Contribution

The study provides a comprehensive integrative review of nurse-led fall prevention programs in acute care settings.

Findings

Nurse-led interventions significantly reduce inpatient falls in acute care settings.

Using multiple fall prevention strategies is more effective than relying on a single method.

Four key themes were identified: strategies, nursing education, fall outcomes, and environmental factors.

Abstract

Falls in acute care settings are associated with negative consequences to patients and the healthcare system. Despite growing awareness of the importance of fall prevention in healthcare, there remains a notable lack of comprehensive reviews specifically evaluating nurse-led fall prevention programs in acute care settings.

This integrative review aimed to synthesize the current evidence on the nurse-led programs designed to prevent falls among adult inpatients in acute care settings.

This integrative review has been registered on the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO). The review was guided by Whittemore and Knafl's five-stage integrative review framework. A systematic literature search was conducted across the CINAHL, Scopus, Medline, Web of Science, and ProQuest databases. Only studies published in English between 2016 and 2024, involving adult populations in acute care settings, were included, regardless of geographic location. Three reviewers independently reviewed and assessed the data extraction and methodological quality of each study using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. The results were then analyzed and synthesized through narrative synthesis.

Of 873 articles screened, 23 were included in the review. Four primary themes related to fall prevention strategies have been identified: the fall prevention strategies, nursing training and education, fall rate outcomes, and organizational and environmental factors.

This integrative review highlights the critical role of nurse-led interventions in reducing inpatient falls within acute care settings. Analyzing the key features of these prevention strategies may enable future researchers to enhance and recommend employing multiple intervention strategies for more effective methods for minimizing fall incidents in such environments. Using a single fall prevention strategy demonstrated lower effectiveness than the multiple strategies.

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