Does Purposeful Hourly Rounding Reduce Patient Falls in the Inpatient Setting?

Presentation ID #13: Click here to view presentation.

Purpose: The purpose of this poster is to conduct a systematic review of the current literature highlighting the impact of purposeful hourly rounding as an effective intervention to reduce inpatient falls rates.

Background: Falls have been a source of injury and disability for hospital patients particularly for the elderly. It has been estimated that there are one million falls annually in United States hospitals. In October 2008, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid stopped reimbursing hospitals for costs related to inpatient falls, leading to significant research on fall prevention.

Methods: A review of the literature was conducted utilizing the databases of PubMED Central and CINAHL. A total of 249 articles were screened. 18 research articles were kept for systematic review. Articles were limited to full text, English language and peer reviewed.

Results: Early studies showed that hourly rounding decreased the number of inpatient falls significantly. However, once this practice was ingrained into hospital culture, later studies showed that hourly rounding had little to no impact on the number of inpatient falls. Studies indicated better results when nursing staff were directly involved in designing and implementing the intervention and leadership was directly involved in maintaining compliance.

Conclusions: Hourly rounding is most effective when combined with individualized care planning and patient and family involvement in the plan of care. More research is indicated to show conditions that potentiate fall reduction along with purposeful hourly rounding.

Charlotte Pardales is a registered nurse, who currently works in pain management in North Carolina. She has two years of experience as a float nurse, serving patients on orthopedic, neurologic, medical/surgical, telemetry, geriatric and hematology/oncology units, and one year of pain management in the outpatient setting.

Charlotte holds a BSN from Northeastern University and graduates with her MSN from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte in May of 2022. She also holds a BS in Exercise Science from the University of South Carolina. Outside of work, Charlotte enjoys mountain biking, hiking, and taking trips to the beach.

Mike Clarke is a registered nurse specializing in critical care, currently working as a staff nurse in the PACU of a community hospital in the mountains of North Carolina. During his 22 year career he has worked multiple units including med-surg, ED, and telemetry with 15 years in the ICU. In addition to being a bedside nurse Mike has also spent 4 years as the house nursing supervisor. Mike obtained his ADN from Trident Technical College in Charleston SC and later completed his BSN from the University of NC Greensboro. He holds national certifications in critical care and med-surg nursing. He graduates with his MSN in August of 2022. When Mike is not working or doing school work he enjoys time with his wife and three daughters as well as backpacking, fly-fishing and mountain biking.

Courtney Skipper is a registered nurse currently working as the manager of Clinical Informatics for a large academic medical center. Over the past 23 years, Courtney has worked in the Burn ICU and has been a nurse builder for Epic, while being in her current position for the last year and a half. She graduated from Azusa Pacific University with her BSN and will graduate with her MSN from UNC Charlotte in August of 2022. Her husband is also a registered nurse. They have 4 children and 2 dogs. In her leisure time, she enjoys any activity her kids are involved in and boating on Lake Norman.