Fall TIPS Tuesdays keep the focus on preventing patient falls

Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital’s interdisciplinary Falls Committee is charged with identifying key factors and tools in fall prevention. In 2017, PACU nurse and member of the Falls Committee Virginia Ryan, MSN, RN, led the implementation of Fall TIPS (tailored interventions for patient safety). To keep the focus on preventing falls, she has since created the Fall TIPS Tuesday contest.

Recently, over the course of four weeks, each of the nursing units were asked to submit Fall TIPS program audits between the hours of 7 am and 3:30 pm on Tuesdays. “All of the medical, surgical and ICU nurses have been asked to do a patient engagement audit on each of their patients using an online audit tool,” explains Ryan, who is the Co-Investigator for the Fall TIPS program and Chair of the Nursing Quality Committee. “The nurses on 6 South won the contest with 117 audits submitted. But more importantly, they have improved their patients’ hospital experience and have bragging rights to 69 days without a patient fall on the unit as of February 19, 2019.”

Ryan also presented a cake to the ICU staff to honor them for being 100 percent compliant with Fall TIPS since the program began in 2017. “There was no way the ICU could have won the Fall TIPS Tuesday contest because the daily census on the other floors is much higher than the ICU. But they consistently have had 100 percent compliance with their Fall TIPS since we began in October 2017 and that is amazing! But the most impressive is the fact that they have now sustained more than 468 days without a patient fall in the ICU as of February 21, 2019!”

Ryan says it’s important to keep the focus on preventing falls and that the Fall TIPS Tuesday contest is a great way to keep the nursing staff engaged in these efforts. “The results we’re seeing prove that when an evidence-based practice is implemented correctly, good things happen.”