All Patients Identified as High Fall Risk Will Use a Bed Alarm, Term Paper Example

Bed alarms have not been a common scenario in health care facilities. People tend to ignore how vital they are in reducing or even curbing patients’ falls, especially the ones labeled as the riskiest at falling. Falling occurs when a patient tries to wake up or sit up with no required assistance, may visit the toilet, or has a mental disturbance issue (Shorr et al., 2012). The adoption of bed alarms to reduce preventable falls and further injuries to patients should be a priority in health centers, especially the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). However, patients with falling risk should be identified and placed in conducive environments, on alarm beds. As Ward-Smith et al. (2014) suggest, the use of an alarm bed requires a backup plan, which in my case will be routine check-ups, an enhanced alarm system, and identifying high-risk falling patients.

The program will ensure overall safety from injuries since the patients will be easily handled, and cooperation from the team of ICU nurses will enhance patient care. Patients with a high risk of falling, that is, those who try to leave their beds with no assistance, either from stubbornness or mental disturbance, will easily be monitored, and fewer falls will be witnessed. Every individual in the ICU team will be updated on the conditions, risks, and level of awareness of the patients under such care. The scenario will enhance the service offered to the patients, making it less risky and relieving some duties like staying beside them every hour. The nursing staff and doctors in the ICU sector will deliver the projected service to patients in critical conditions.

My expertise as a nurse leader will be enhanced and decorated by the success of such an ideology. The sectors it covers, beginning with the main area, ICU, will mean one major issue is solved or reduced to manageable levels. Patients will finally enjoy full care therapy while, on the other hand, nurses will love their work and enhance their professionalism and competency. In addition, critical condition patients will be managed in a safer and more effective model for both stakeholders.

The model will fit my area of expertise as it will assist patients in recovering quickly at lesser risk of inflicting injuries to themselves. They will be able to realize how safe it is for them to await assistance when it comes to leaving their beds. The patients will also gain the notion of safety and well-being, as they will realize the importance of avoiding injury risk in recovery.

The ideology also fits my area of expertise as it assists the patients in gaining self-realization, and they settle their minds in their environment. In the ICU, patients are in critical conditions, and most do not realize where they are until they begin recovering. The ideology will aid in quick recovery since the injury risk has been reduced, thus quick self-realization and peace of mind concerning the ICU environment. Accepting a health care environment is the first step to quick and easier patient recovery.

Cost Analysis and Benefits

In every project or implementation, there is always a dire need to balance the benefits and costs incurred (Weaver, 2016). In this program, there will be a need for competency and commitment from the team of nurses in the department. The second vital resource will be the alarm bed system, enhanced and set effectively to operate with no issues or failures. Thirdly, we require additional beds to categorize the ones to have the alarms systems and the ones to replace the ones we have installed alarm systems, plus a need for spare beds. The last resource will be an isolation room, which will help isolate the highly risk falling patients and the most vulnerable to injury. The following sector will be a critical and thorough analysis of any cost and expected benefit.

Analysis

The budget is fairly worth saving patients’ lives and improving risk measures in the ICU sector. Avoidable issues like falling injuries can lead to death, especially in the ICU, where the patients are already in critical conditions.

Lives will be saved and further injuries avoided, making the sector safe from avoidable errors and self-inflicted injuries from falls and unusual bed turns. The program has incorporated specialization to slot in competency and commitment for the projected results. Data storage and exchange between the stakeholders will ensure precision and minimal errors when handling patients in different shifts. The alarm systems are equipped with pressure sensors and thus alert nurses when a patient has made a slight turn, which might be against the medical procedure. The system is enhanced and reliable for fast alerts and thus quick responses to falling-risk or turning-risk patients. Physicians will be assessing the falling-risk patients, and with the help of monitoring nurses, the risk will be monitored every treatment session to define any changes. The less risky patients will also be monitored and assessed in case of any developments of risk factors.

Patients gain a sense of understanding and become responsive to medical procedures. Achieving the feat will be a depiction of my career expertise in assisting nurses attend to patients to overcome what is called “ICU trauma”. This disorder is accompanied by recovery from the ICU sector and is mostly associated with fear, anxiety, nightmares, or worse (Chivukula et al., 2017). Chivukula and her colleagues found that a better ICU environment is essential in reducing the conditions. The program will improve the ICU sector in terms of services, environment, and interactions, thus reducing post-ICU conditions.

My team of nursing staff in the facility will gain several important skills in dealing with or caring for ICU patients. Nurses are the ones closest to patients and thus carry the blame for satisfying a patient (University of New Mexico [UNM], 2016). My nurse team will find the program essential in different significant ways. For instance, competency and commitment will be established or cemented through this program as every involved stakeholder will give their all to serve the patients. Personal skills like interaction behavior will change since annoying factors like patients waking out of bed with no assistance will be reduced, thus a different perception towards patients.

I will prove my career objectives in my sector by helping my fellow nurses generate good values and be future-oriented. For instance, the program aids in reducing future ICU trauma by eliminating the causal factors from the root of the issue. Their close interaction will advance, making them produce their best services, and increase their work rate and commitment. After a while, they will gain more and more experienced and thus become professional in taking care of critical patients with adverse skills in aiding them in controlling their future post-ICU trauma. Furthermore, giving the perspective a closer look, you realize the program in helping the nurses love and cope with their tasks while loving sharing duties and smooth coordination will adversely help the whole society acquire the best health care services.

Enhancing nurses’ skills will, in turn, help the patients appreciate themselves with ease in recovering from the cause of their mental disturbances, be it trauma or depression. The calmness and close treatments can also enhance their behavioral reactions while balancing the nurses’ attitudes towards taking care of patients in critical condition.

I would say that the nursing pioneer, madam Florence Nightingale can be any nurse’s role model, but I would like to categorize her as the heroine of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) creation. Despite her rich family background, Nightingale is devoted to helping wounded soldiers from war. She changed the local health center into an admirable and hygienic place for better recovery. Her warm affection for helping led to her ideology of separating the illest patients into a separate or isolated area for advanced and critical care (Dempsey, 2022). She idealized the creation of an isolated area for critically sick people near the nurses for quick assistance (Dempsey, 2022), which later became the department I am in today, ICU. However, in the modern world, technology has done away with these units, but it did spark the idea of having closer attention to the sickest in a health care facility, and to date, nurses are advised to be closer to the critically sick patients.

I adore it when a person stands out for the overall population and voices their cries even without their call or concern. Clara Barton outdid herself during the Civil war and attended to soldiers during war times through several challenges but never gave up. She pushed for a support program, which has existed since then, called “The Red Cross” (Guth, 2016). The program has helped millions and continues to help people across the world. Although she is in an overall department of nursing, her zeal and courage to push for help to people globally is something to be adored and honored. The help the two nurses offered to the world is inspiring. I am not saying that I do not adore other great nurses, but the two played a bigger portion of my objectives and made me feel it is possible to achieve anything in a nursing career. One can use their expertise to make others smile, regardless of their status as patients or staff.

I have learned so many skills and knowledge from the two nurses; they inspire me to this point in my career. Having a helping heart and a passion for voicing the physically, mentally, and incapable people is part of my career objectives. Making people smile through challenges and instilling courage and confidence in fellow nurses is a motive I would like to achieve. I have always dreamt of using any expertise I achieve in life to make people around the world smile. Even though it seems impossible to reach out to everyone, at least in my community, it is easier and a step to begin. The likes of Nightingale pushed for a worldwide program that will exist forever and continue putting smiles on people’s faces globally through her expertise as a nurse. They have inspired me to where I am today, and thank be to the heroism depicted through their careers.

References

Chivukula, U., Hariharan, M., Rana, S., Thomas, M., & Andrew, A. (2017). Enhancing Hospital Well-being and Minimizing Intensive Care Unit Trauma: Cushioning Effects of Psychosocial Care. Indian journal of critical care medicine: peer-reviewed, official publication of Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine, 21(10), 640–645. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijccm.IJCCM_468_14

Dempsey, L. (11 May 2022). The Heroes That Shaped Modern Health Care. TopDoctors- UK. Accessed from https://www.topdoctors.co.uk/blog/the-heroes-that-shaped-modern-health-care/

Guth, R. (10 May 2016). Top 5 Most Important Nurses in History (Besides Florence Nightingale). Nurse.org. Accessed from https://nurse.org/articles/nurses-in-history/

Nurses are the Future of Healthcare (14 October 2016). The University of New Mexico. Accessed from https://rnbsnonline.unm.edu/articles/nurses-are-the-future-of-healthcare.aspx

Shorr, R. I., Chandler, A. M., Mion, L. C., Waters, T. M., Liu, M., Daniels, M. J., Kessler, L. A., & Miller, S. T. (2012). Effects of an intervention to increase bed alarm use to prevent falls in hospitalized patients: a cluster randomized trial. Annals of internal medicine, 157(10), 692–699. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-157-10-201211200-00005

Ward-Smith, P., Barrett, L., Rayson, K., & Govro, K. (2014). Effectiveness of a bed alarm system to predict falls in an acute care setting. Clinical Nursing Studies, 3(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/cns.v3n1p1

Weaver, M. (13 October 2016). Training Program Costing Example. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). https://depts.washington.edu/cfar/sites/default/files/uploads/core-program/user164/Session5_Weaver_CostTrainingOfPrograms_2016v2.pdf