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Number of nursing staff and falls: a case‐control study on falls by stroke patients in acute‐care settings
Author(s) -
Tutuarima Joan A,
Haan Rob J,
Limburg Martien
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of advanced nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.948
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1365-2648
pISSN - 0309-2402
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2648.1993.18071101.x
Subject(s) - evening , workload , medicine , stroke (engine) , emergency medicine , nursing care , nursing staff , confidence interval , nursing , physical therapy , operating system , mechanical engineering , physics , astronomy , computer science , engineering
Falls occur frequently in patients with a stroke and have serious consequences discharge delays and hip fractures can result In order to evaluate the impact of nursing workload on stroke‐patient falls, we assessed the patients per nurse ratio in a detailed case‐control study earned out in nine Dutch hospitals There were 49 first falls by 349 stroke patients Between the cases and controls there was no difference in the means of these ratios for any type of nurse and any type of patient on the day and evening shift We found that the greatest number of falls ( n = 26) occurred on the day shift when most nursing staff were present On the night shift, we found a significant difference between the means of the patient per nurse ratios (95% confidence interval 0 28–2 20), but the number of cases was very small Of the falls, 35% occurred within the first week of admission We found 19 cases in a subgroup of 138 patients that could be checked with the hospital incidents report committees This review yielded three additional cases, but nine cases were not reported to these committees We conclude that simply increasing number of nurses is not likely to diminish the number of falls