Analysis of incidents of fall in the patients receiving home healthcare services

Abstract

Background: Incidents of fall remains the major cause of accidental and unintended injury in health care setups. Caring for patients at homecare setting comes with its own challenges and concerns. Methods: The incidents of fall reported over past 18 months in patients availing home care services from Healthcare at home from February 2018 to August 2019 was analysed to identify various risk factors involved in fall and suggestions for fall prevention were laid out in the study. Results: The fall percentage reported was 1.29% of patients served by HCAH during this tenure. The incident of fall was higher in rehabilitation services and lower in nursing services. The results show that prevalence of falling was higher among women than men between the age of 65-84 years. The highest number of falls was reported in patients suffering from neuro disorders, most of the incidents resulted due to external factors where more emphasis needs to be given on creating safe environment in the patient's home. Conclusion: Providing clinical care at home environment even makes it more difficult to control certain factors such as adequate space in the room for safe mobilization or unavailability of grab bars or presence of slippery floors or poor lightening are the majorly contributing to incidents like falls. Thus, identifying underlying risk while admitting the patient in homecare becomes the primary responsibility of the care provider.