Open AccessChallenges in Defining and Categorizing Falls on Diverse Unit Types
Author(s) -
Vincent S. Staggs,
Jan Davidson,
Nancy Dunton,
Brandon Crosser
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of nursing care quality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.554
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1550-5065
pISSN - 1057-3631
DOI - 10.1097/ncq.0000000000000085
Subject(s) - unit (ring theory) , scale (ratio) , quality (philosophy) , medical emergency , medicine , computer science , psychology , geography , cartography , philosophy , mathematics education , epistemology
In 2012, the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators launched a project to expand its falls indicator for use on pediatric, neonatal, and psychiatric units. We discuss challenges encountered, argue that schemes for categorizing falls by cause or supposed preventability are not suitable for large-scale efforts to track and prevent falls, express concern about the growing burden of collecting increasingly granular quality data, and discuss limitations of total and injurious fall rates as quality measures.