2042-16: Never Let a Stumble be the End of Your Journey: The Road to Decreasing Falls on a Gero-Psych Unit; Reducing Falls with Injury on an Inpatient Geriatric Psychiatry Unit through the Elevation of Nursing Support Staff: An Interprofessional Approach

This mini concurrent session includes two 20-minute presentations (described below) plus Q&A.

Never Let a Stumble be the End of Your Journey: The Road to Decreasing Falls on a Gero-Psych Unit
Discover how two organizations were able to decrease falls in their inpatient psychiatric units.  A falls analysis was conducted, which resulted in the implementation of non-traditional preventive measures at both organizations.  This session will review the interventions and results of the initiatives.  Presenters: Ann Evans, MSN, RN; Bonnie Underwood, BSN, RN 

Reducing Falls with Injury on an Inpatient Geriatric Psychiatry Unit through the Elevation of Nursing Support Staff: An Interprofessional Approach
Discover how one organization was able to decrease their inpatient psychiatry falls with injury rate by 100% through an internal certification program which elevated the practice of nursing support staff.  The initiative was supported by an interprofessional task force aimed at identifying patients who had unsteady gait and low MoCA.  Presenters: Lynn Ives, MSN, RN-BC; Jessie Reich, MSN, RN, ANP-BC, CMSRN 

Disclosures: The presenters and planners have no conflict of interest or commercial support to disclose.  Off-label uses will not be discussed during this presentation.

Session Length: 39 minutes 

Target Audience: RN 

Session Objectives
Upon completion of this presentation, the participant will be able to:

1. Name fall prevention techniques for hospitalized geriatric psych patients.
2. Recognize best practice in fall prevention.
3. Identify strategies utilized to implement an internal falls with injury reduction program for nursing support staff.
4. Describe interventions used to elevate the practice of nursing support staff. 

Keywords: Fall Prevention, Geriatric, Safety, Dementia, Debrief Team, Evidence Based Fall Risk, Morris Fall Scale 

Continuing Nursing Education
0.75 contact hours. * In order to receive contact hours, you must: Listen to presentation, complete an evaluation, and earn a passing score on the post-test before the expiration date. You will have 5 tries to correctly answer the questions on the post-test and a score of 80% is required to pass. Once you have passed and completed an evaluation, the certificate will be generated online, available for you to print immediately. You cannot earn credit unless all steps are completed.

The American Psychiatric Nurses Association is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.

Originally Presented
APNA 30th Annual Conference
Hartford, Connecticut
Thursday, October 20
3:00pm - 3:45pm 

Release Date: May 30, 2017
The contact hours for this session expire: November 30, 2019