The Affect Factors of Geriatric Hospital Nurse’s Falls Prevention Activities

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to understand the relation among fall knowledge, fall attitude, nursing environment and fall prevention activities in nurses who work at geriatric hospitals, and identify factors which affect on fall prevention activities. Methods: Using the convenient sampling method, the data were collected from nurses who had been working at 16 geriatric hospitals in D Metropolitan City for longer than three months. The collected data from 210 nurses were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA with Scheffė test and multiple regression with SPSS/WIN 20.0. Results: Subjects’ fall knowledge and fall attitude turned out to work as relatively high influence factors. They perceived nursing practice environment as positive and highly involved in fall prevention activities as well. Geriatric hospital nurses who were older, married, paid better, more experienced in clinical environment and learned more about fall-related education were better at fall prevention activities. Fall prevention activities were significantly related to fall attitude and nursing practice environment. Under the control of individual characteristics among geriatric hospital nurses, Hierarchial Linear Regression revealed that fall attitude, wage and fall education hours worked as positive influence factors, however, nursing practice environment did not affect much. Explanation power of the variables were 30.4%. Conclusions: Based on the result of the study, an education program with sufficient hours to change nurses’ fall attitude needs to be developed, and a plan which will bring positive change in nursing practice environment needs to be sought to improve geriatric hospital nurses’ fall prevention activities. Key words: Accidental falls, Practice environment, Accident prevention