Objective: Inpatient falls are a common adverse event in hospital safety management and can lead to serious injuries. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program in managing hospitalized patients at high risk for falls and to evaluate its impact on the incidence of inpatient falls, nurses' knowledge level on fall prevention, and the risk perception level of high-risk patients.
Methods: Patients at high risk for falls and practicing nurses from five wards of the First People's Hospital of QinZhou were selected as study subjects. A Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program was implemented, which included establishing a multidisciplinary safety management team, implementing standardized fall risk assessment and warning procedures, conducting targeted nurse training and assessment on fall prevention, providing evidence-based fall prevention health education to patients and their families, and optimizing the ward environment and fall prevention facilities. The effectiveness was evaluated by comparing the incidence of inpatient falls, scores on the Nurses' Fall Warning Knowledge Scale, and scores on the High-Risk Patient Fall Risk Perception Scale before and after program implementation.
Results: After project implementation, the annual incidence of inpatient falls significantly decreased to 0.085‰ compared to 0.16‰ before implementation, and the difference was statistically significant (p < 0.05). The average score on the knowledge assessment for 121 nurses significantly improved from (186.87 ± 21.17) points to (228.31 ± 35.76) points (p < 0.05). The risk perception score of high-risk patients increased from (22.57 ± 9.61) points to (31.45 ± 11.59) points (p < 0.05).
Conclusion: The Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program effectively reduced the fall incidence among hospitalized high-risk patients. It simultaneously enhanced nurses' professional knowledge and patients' own risk awareness, thereby establishing a more effective multi-dimensional safety protection network, which is worthy of clinical promotion.
