Patient falls in healthcare settings has long been a problem that despite many attempts to solve still continues to happen all too frequently. The solution most hospitals and long term care facililities have implemented in recent years are bed and chair alarms.
There recently was a short article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in which a nursing home was cited for neglect in a resident’s death. In reading the information contained in the article I think a better, more accurate way to state the problem instead of neglect would have been to cite the nursing home for a breakdown in their resident care system. I see a lack of a systems approach using human factors for resident care. For if one was in place the death of the resident could have been prevented.
Continuing on with my blog series on the four common reasons why employees don’t do what they’ve been trained, I’m going to take a closer look at perception. The scenario I’m going to use as the basis for this is one which is occurring in many hospitals and long term care facilities around the country: caregivers not using safe patient handling (SPH) equipment to move patients. This has become a source of frustration for many SPH program leaders. As you will see, the lack of SPH equipment use could easily involve all 4 reasons but for this blog we’ll focus only on perception.
