Simple strategies can reduce falls and liability: women and elderly fall more frequently.

Publication: Rehab Continuum Report

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COPYRIGHT 2004 A Thomson Healthcare Company

Slips, trips, and falls happen in any health care setting, and they can be enormously expensive. The good news is you can sharply reduce those accidents by aggressively employing some rather simple strategies.

Simple, but not necessarily obvious. Sure, your housekeeping staff clean up spills when they're reported, but how fast? Have you ever had someone slip in a spill between the time it was reported and the time it was actually cleaned up? It happens.

Thinking about realities like that is a big step toward reducing slips and falls, says Ruth M. Maher, PT, DPT, MPT, BS, director of physical therapy at HyOx Medical Treatment Center in Marietta, GA. HyOx is a comprehensive outpatient rehabilitation facility, and Maher has worked in reducing slips, trips, and falls in a variety of health care settings.

"The cost and effort required to reduce these incidents is far less than what is required to deal with the aftermath, especially if it results in legal action," she says.

Falls likely to result in injuries

Maher notes that among U.S. industries with 100,000 or more injuries and illnesses, hospitals have the second highest rate of nonfatal injury or illness cases. (1)

If you consider that injuries from falls are approximately 40% greater in hospitals than in general industry, it is not surprising that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Washington, DC, along with the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore and Liberty Mutual Research Institute in Hopkinton, MA, are conducting a study of transient risk factors, which may lead to occupational slips and falls in hospital settings.

Pilot data from last year showed that 86% were women, 36% were nurses, and 12% were employed in housekeeping.

The hospital workers were asked a series of questions about the circumstances prior to the incident. Fifty-five percent fell after slipping and 41% after tripping; 34% involved liquid such as water or cleaning solutions; and 59% of the incidents occurred at a transitional area (such as wet to dry, from...

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