Health Professional Perceptions of Delivering Hospital Falls Prevention Education-A Qualitative Study

Providing patient falls prevention education can help reduce falls in hospitals, yet research exploring staff perceptions about providing falls education in hospitals is limited.

We sought to determine enablers and barriers to implementing a hospital falls prevention education program (the Safe Recovery Program) from the clinical staff perspective.

Purposive sampling was used to recruit health professionals (N = 40) from 12 acute medical and surgical wards at a 450-bed hospital in Perth, Western Australia. Participants were given the option to take part in a focus group or semi-structured interview. Data were analyzed via directed content analysis.

Findings were distinguished into 2 themes, being the barriers and enablers to implementing the Safe Recovery Program. Enabler subthemes were the mode and medium of delivering the program, the use of repetition to instill the learnings, identifying who is best to deliver the program, and utilizing the role of informal carers to reinforce the education. Barrier subthemes were patient cognitive impairments and patient illness, patient risk-taking behavior, timing of program delivery according to patient readiness, time and resource shortage, and communication barriers with non-English speaking patients.

A comprehensive approach to program delivery can enable health professionals to implement evidence-based falls prevention education in hospitals. Extant factors must be considered during the implementation phase to ensure the Safe Recovery Program is sustainable and to optimize patient uptake of falls prevention education.