Background: Despite vast evidence describing risk factors associated with falls and fall prevention strategies, falls continue to present challenges in acute care settings.
Objective: To describe and categorize patient and nurse perspectives on falls and nurses' suggestions for preventing falls.
Methods: To improve transparency about the causes of falls, nurses interviewed patients in a 48-bed progressive cardiac care unit who had experienced a fall. A content analysis approach was used to examine responses to 3 open-ended items: why patients said they fell, why nurses said the patients fell, and nurses' reflections on how each fall could have been prevented.
Results: Over a 2-year period, 67 falls occurred. Main themes regarding causes of falls were activity (41 falls, 61%), coordination (16 falls, 24%), and environment (10 falls, 15%). Patients said they fell because they slipped, had a medical issue, were dizzy, or had weak legs. Nurses said patients fell because they had a medical issue or did not call for assistance.
Conclusions: Nurses and patients agreed on the causes of assisted falls but disagreed on the causes of unassisted falls. Nurses frequently said that the use of a bed alarm could have prevented the fall.
©2020 American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.