NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 1
[Student Name]
Capella University
[Prof. Name]
August 2025
NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 1: Enhancing Quality and Safety
Before patients fall in the health institutions, it is a risk to be taken seriously particularly in the case of the weak patients whose age is well advanced. To enhance the wellbeing of the patients and lower the healthcare expenses, the effective preventative measures are necessary. Also, nurses play the critical role of coordinating the fall prevention program and executing evidence-based practices in the context of cooperating with other medical experts. In NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 1, one will observe the causes of patient falls and what can be done to avoid them, and how nurses can contribute to cost savings and patient safety..
Factors Leading to Patient Fall
Risks such as environmental and internal may play a role in causing patient falls in the places of care due to a combination of factors. The presence of a variety of intrinsic factors, influencing safety and quality is a precondition of falls as predisposes the presence of cognitive disorders and chronic conditions as well as the age of seniors. Some like the elderly cannot balance or co-ordinate well and as a result, they tend to fall (Ainani & Irwan, 2024). Moreover, a postural effect induced by the drugs like sedatives or antihypertensive drugs may predispose the patients to falls (Ainani & Irwan, 2024). Moreover, the consequences of environmental risk created by getting out of bed, being on a wet floor, improper lighting, altering the bed height, etc. add to the risk of falling.
Hospital characteristics are also a determinant in prevalence of falls. Poor staffing, ineffective observation of patients, time lag, and misunderstanding are only some of the factors that contribute to exacerbating risks regarding the concept of quality and patient safety (Najafpour et al., 2019). In line with NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 1, the risk can also rise owing to the lack of communication between the
medical teams concerning ineffective information on the prevention of falls. As mentioned in the quality and safety education for nurses, transferred patients must face many physical difficulties in their movements to new and relatively unfamiliar hospital settings and may be transported with inadequate assistance at a risk of falls (Najafpour et al., 2019). All this makes it clear in NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 1 that it is not surprising and only useful that the emergence of the fall-related issues occurring in the medical facilities due to environmental and personal causes are prevented.
Evidence-Based and Best-Practice Solutions
There are many best practices and evidence-based interventions programs developed and applied in the conditions of hospitals to attain success in patient falls lessening with the sole objective to improve the safety and quality and the reduction of the healthcare delivery costs. One of the means of solving the problem is to conduct the individual risk assessment of the falls to each patient when he/she is admitted to the treatment and monitoring. Mobility, cognitive ability, the intake of prescription medications, and the count of prior falls are additional aspects that one ought to take into account to implement the required preventive interventions (LeLaurin & Shorr, 2019). This can help in reducing the high-risk patients because the activities required to change the high-risk patient factors can be initiated early thus modifying the high risk factors like use of the assistive devices, change in medications and improve on the degree of supervision. This improves quality and patient safety and has been reported to significantly minimize the instances of fall (Morris et al., 2022).
The other quality intervention noted in NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 1 is the multidisciplinary fall prevention team that consists of medical staff with varying
backgrounds, i.e., physical therapists, nurses, and pharmacists. Together, these teams are capable of offering an comprehensive plan of care that will include staff training, personalized interventions and changes to the environment. In this situation, bed alarms and a dry floor or call bells can ensure that the patient avoids falling (Turner et al., 2020). The systematic reviews have concluded that the most appropriate intervention approaches to a fall reduction are trainings of staff, educations of patients, and environmental changes (Morris et al., 2022).
Additionally, they are in a position to set up procedures and practices on falls and prevention and continually maintain training their employees to facilitate uniformity across various units within the hospital and provision of quality and safety in nursing. The most significant expenditures in relation to avoidable hospital readmissions are reduction ones, and when similar fall prevention procedures are encouraged in all hospital departments, the expenses prove even lower than in the previous period with more fall-related illnesses (Turner et al., 2020). A next step towards real-time evaluation of fall risk and preventive measures can be the involvement of electronic health records (EHR) which would streamline the process of monitoring and response interventions towards patient safety and cost savings in the long run (LeLaurin & Shorr, 2019). The hospitals will enhance patient safety and reduce the cost incurred to heal a patient who fell due to paying emphasis to the evidence-based solutions that have been outlined and highlighted in NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 1.
Nurse Coordination
Field nurses working in the area of falls may be useful in terms of designing treatments to minimize cost and maximize safety to the patient. The application of
senior citizen fall prevention strategies is considered to be one of the well-known examples of the help that the nurses can render. According to Ojo and Thiamwong (2022), nurse-led proactive programs that include the above-mentioned interventions are essential in ensuring that the risks of falls among elderly individuals are reduced given that the comprehensive nature of the programs enables the occurrence of risks on a much higher level. As stressed in quality and safety education of nurses, the nurses would be in good position to observe the mobility of patients, their cognitive stable conditions, as well as their risk arrangements. They are also able to make sure that there is immediate follow up as in change of medication or a referral to physical therapist. Patients incur injuries that can be truly expensive to treat and to avoid the expenses added to them by bearing the injury costs they ensure that patients are assured of lack of falls thus the hindrance of the expenses incurred by the injury, absence and delayed rehabilitation (NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 1). Nurses can also help the multidisciplinary teams on the areas of communication and consistency in relation to the implementing of the fall prevention strategies. Nurses can also ensure that all risk factors associated with falls are communicated appropriately and that the various members of the team are known about secluded needs of the patient since they are the ones who serve as liaisons between the patients, their personalities and other health workers. Namely, nurses can staff train, modify the environment, and provide assistive equipment based on the evaluation of patients and changes they make regularly (Turner et al., 2020). This cross-discipline initiative will cut the expenditure of care provision related to falls and fall-related outcomes , as discussed in the prior
assignment (NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 1), since patient outcomes can be expected to improve, and fewer inaccuracies would be committed.
Stakeholders to Coordinate with Nurses
To enhance safety and quality and curtail the issue of patients falling, nurses will play a critical role in organizing care with other stakeholders. Physicians will be among the major stakeholder groups because they can offer important medical observation, give appropriate treatments, and offer relevant prescription drugs that can influence the chance of falls. To provide early intervention in high-risk patients, nurses liaise with doctors so that the treatment plan can be altered. As an illustration, closer monitoring would be ensured to provide patients who take medications causing dizziness or hypotension to update changes to their regimen immediately (Ojo & Thiamwong, 2022). Nurse-physician collaboration will ensure that nurses and doctors collaborate to produce and implement comprehensive and individualized care plans, which is an important fall prevention measure. Other key stakeholders are the physical therapists (PTs) who will be at the forefront in the assessment and improvement of the mobility of research patients as indicated in quality and safety education of nurses. Phychical therapists and nurses work together, building the personalized rehabilitation plans intended to help patients become more powerful and more coordinated and keep their balance hence eliminating the risk of falling. According to NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 1, frequent physical examination of the patients, in terms of gait by PT, can help nurses understand why they ought to offer and provide extra methods of managing that failing gait, such as supportive devices and mobility aids (Turner et al., 2020). The importance risks including maintenance of proper bed height and
non-slippery floors and the presence of good light is scrutinized and helps in ensuring that hospital environment is safe; this is among role that the environmental services team can take to ensure quality and safety in nursing profession. Safety, PTs and nurse safety communication in a cross-sectional manner are the epitome of fall prevention and patient safety.
Conclusion
Overall, patient falls are prevalent hospital risks and following the combined efforts of the health care team, it is observed that unprecedented enhancement of health care security/profitability are possible. To enhance quality and patient safety, nurses need to participate in the implementation of any fall prevention program, selecting high-risk patients, and turn to the medical opinion of doctors, physical therapists, and environmental services. Based on the facts provided in NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 1, evidence-based practices and collaboration can enable a healthcare facility to prevent fall incidents, as the strategy is closely associated with better patient care and spending less on the, so to say, medical industry.
References
Ainani, N., & Irwan, A. M. (2024). Factors associated with patient falls in hospitals: A scoping review. Journal of Integrative Nursing, 6(2), 117-126. https://doi.org/10.4103/jin.jin_133_23
LeLaurin, J. H., & Shorr, R. I. (2019). Preventing falls in hospitalized patients. Clinics in Geriatric Medicine, 35(2), 273–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cger.2019.01.007
Morris, M. E., Webster, K., Jones, C., Hill, A. M., Haines, T., McPhail, S., … & Cameron, I. (2022). Interventions to reduce falls in hospitals: A systematic review and meta- analysis. Age and Ageing, 51(5), afac077. https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afac077
Najafpour, Z., Godarzi, Z., Arab, M., & Yaseri, M. (2019). Risk factors for falls in hospital in- patients: A prospective nested case-control study. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 8(5), 300-306. https://doi.org/10.15171/ijhpm.2019.11
Ojo, E. O., & Thiamwong, L. (2022). Effects of nurse-led fall prevention programs for older adults: a systematic review. Pacific Rim international journal of nursing research, 26(3),417. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36051891/
Turner, K., Staggs, V. https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afac077 S., Potter, C., Cramer, E., Shorr, R. I., & Mion, L. C. (2020). Fall prevention practices and implementation strategies: Examining consistency across hospital units. Journal of Patient Safety, 18(1), e236-e242. https://doi.org/10.1097/pts.0000000000000758
