Summarizing and Synthesizing Research

Like other care organizations, skilled nursing care facilities are sometimes faced with traditional healthcare challenges bordering safety and quality safeguards. As evident in the selected care organizations, falls represent a safety and quality compromise that has far wide stretching ramifications.  There is a consensual literature finding on the impact of hospital falls on the wellness and care outcomes of residents of long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes: Summarizing and Synthesizing Research.

This warrants their address.  A literature search using the EBP question “What are the most effective ways of curtailing patient falls within nursing care facilities?” yielded three articles on fall prevention.

Summary of the Articles

The article by Schoberer et al. (2022) is a clinical guideline highlighting fall prevention measures for hospitals and nursing homes. The research integrates systematic reviews and primary studies to elucidate patient and caregiver-related interventions against patient falls in inpatient care settings. Patient and caregiver education, counselling, and body exercise movements were recommended for frail residents to minimize their likelihood of falling. They can thus be applied in an inpatient setting to curtail patient falls.

The article by Albasha et al. (2024) evaluates healthcare staff perspectives on fall prevention activities for long-term care facilities. The article used a qualitative methodology approach to elucidate effective and highly acceptable interventions by patients and caregivers in mitigating patient falls. Staff education, fall policies, person-centred care, documentation, effective healthcare leadership, and a safe environment are some of the measures necessary to curtail hospital falls. They can thus be applied in an inpatient setting to curtail patient falls.

The article by Dykes et al. (2020) evaluates Fall TIPS as a patient-centred fall prevention toolkit utilized in mitigating hospital falls. The study used a quantitative approach integrating a non-randomized control trial design to investigate the effectiveness of the fall prevention toolkit in 37231 patient participants. Fall TIPS was associated with a significant reduction in falls and fall-related injuries in hospital settings. Fall TIPS can thus be used to curtail falls in long-term care facilities.

Article Synthesis

The EBP question steered the article search process toward sources that detail specific interventions against patient falls in nursing care facilities. The articles recognized the significance of addressing patient falls and injuries resulting from falls in quality and safety improvements in inpatient care settings. As evident across the articles, several measures can be applied to curtail falls among hospitalized patients.

The common thematic areas from the articles include fall prevention in inpatient care settings, the effectiveness of fall prevention interventions, and the applicability and practicality of the existing interventions. Fall prevention efforts such as staff education on falls and fall prevention, patient counselling on falls and fall prevention, body exercise movements, patient-centered approaches, documentation, and a safe clinical environment were necessary for reducing falls in hospital setups.

These approaches were associated with a reduction in falls in hospitals, warranting their use. These measures were found to be practical as they are acceptable to nurses and other caregivers and could be implemented across settings. Likewise, multifactorial interventions, such as fall prevention toolkits, were effective in reducing falls and injuries associated with falls.

Several elements of the intervention and setting influenced the outcomes. Foremost, the studies were specific to hospital settings. They also exploited environmental, caregiver-related, and patient-specific measures that could help mitigate falls. While there is a variation in the study setting across the studies, there is a similarity in the target populations.

Hospitalized older patients are faced with common challenges, such as frailty, that predispose them to falls (Yang et al., 2023). Results from the sources can thus be generalized to nursing homes and other skilled nursing care facilities.

Overall, addressing hospital falls remains integral to safety and quality improvement in long-term care facilities. Fall prevention interventions, such as staff education, patient counselling, fall documentation, and environmental safety, are crucial in mitigating falls. These interventions are proven effective in reducing adult falls in hospital settings and can thus be applied in long-term care settings, such as nursing homes.

Likewise, multifactorial interventions, such as the integration of fall prevention toolkits, are another way of minimizing fall incidents in hospital care settings. Fall TIPS is an example of a fall prevention toolkit that has been proven to reduce incidents of falls in hospitals. Implementing such intervention could thus result in fall reduction within the nursing home under scrutiny.

References

Albasha, N., Curtin, C., McCullagh, R., Cornally, N., & Timmons, S. (2024). Staff perspectives on fall prevention activities in long-term care facilities for older residents: “Brief but often” staff education is key. PLOS ONE, 19(9). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310139

Dykes, P. C., Burns, Z., Adelman, J., Benneyan, J., Bogaisky, M., Carter, E., Ergai, A., Lindros, M. E., Lipsitz, S. R., Scanlan, M., Shaykevich, S., & Bates, D. W. (2020). Evaluation of a patient-centered fall-prevention tool kit to reduce falls and injuries. JAMA Network Open, 3(11). https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.25889

Schoberer, D., Breimaier, H. E., Zuschnegg, J., Findling, T., Schaffer, S., & Archan, T. (2022). Fall prevention in hospitals and Nursing Homes: Clinical Practice Guideline. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 19(2), 86–93. https://doi.org/10.1111/wvn.12571

Yang, Z.-C., Lin, H., Jiang, G.-H., Chu, Y.-H., Gao, J.-H., Tong, Z.-J., & Wang, Z. (2023). Frailty is a risk factor for falls in older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging, 27(6), 487–495. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-023-1935-8

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This Assignment is Part 2 of the Assignment you submitted in Week 8. In Part 1 of this Assignment, you used the Walden library to conduct a literature review and appraised your results to select the highest quality and most appropriate and significant evidence. Now, you will take the recent (within the last five years), peer-reviewed articles you selected and write brief summaries of each of them, and then write a synthesis of all of them.To prepare:

• Review the Learning Resources for this week which focus on how to summarize and synthesize literature search results.
• Review the course textbook Appendix H, located in the Learning Resources for this week, which you will be required to complete and submit as part of this Assignment.
• Refer to your Assignment submission from Week 8 and prepare to write a summary of each of the three articles you selected.
• Refer to your Assignment submission from Week 8 and prepare to write a synthesis of the three articles you selected.

Note: For this Assignment, you must complete Appendix H. You will submit your completed Appendix H along with your 2–3-page paper.

Note: Be sure to review the grading rubric for this Assignment so you fully understand what is expected of you. To access the rubric, scroll down to the bottom of the Assignment page.

Summarizing and Synthesizing Research

The Assignment: (2–3 pages)
Write a paper in which you do the following:

• Using a scholarly voice, summarize each of the three articles you selected.
• Using a scholarly voice, synthesize the three articles you selected.
• Include a copy of your completed Appendix H.

Note: You will submit your completed Appendix G along with your 2–3-page paper. Save copies of your completed Appendix G in Word format. You will submit a total of two documents, your completed Appendix G and your 2–3-page paper synthesis of the three selected articles.