Risk assessment and fall prevention: practice development in action

Amongst the health disciplines, nurses spend the most time with patients providing most of the supervision in care. Therefore, nurses have a primary role to play in contributing to knowledge surrounding the best methods of assessment of risk and prevention of adverse events. According to the Australian Incident Monitoring System (AIMS), the adverse event (38%) most frequently reported in acute hospital settings is patient falls (Evans et al 1998). The continuing rise in reported rates of falls in the acute medical wards of a tertiary hospital, on the Central Coast of New South Wales (NSW), Australia was the impetus for an action research project aimed at increasing nurses' sense of ownership of their fall prevention practice. This paper specifically reports the findings of a pilot project related to development of a fall risk assessment chart that was one of the cycles of the action research.