Objective:

Patient safety is one of the most important indicators of qualified health care. Research indicates that the majority of medical errors that threaten patient safety belong to the health care system. One of the situations that threaten patient safety in hospitals is also the falling and being injured of the patients arising from environmental and individual factors. Among the most common secondary cause of injury in hospitals, falling have an important place. It is one of the most important legal and ethical responsibilities of a nurse to protect the patients from secondary injury by providing a sustainable safe environment at hospitals.

Material and Methods:

This is a descriptive study and aims to examine the precautions taken by the nurses working a training and research hospital, against to the risk of falling of the patients in clinical service. All the nurses working in inpatient clinic of same training and research hospital in the time being of April 2014 and June 2014 formed the population of the study. A total of 212 volunteer nurses selected by simple random sampling method formed the sample of the study. Data were analyzed in SPSS for frequency and percentage, mean, standard deviation.

Results:

Findings revealed that 99% of nurses surveyed (n=210) used a scale for evaluate the risk of falling to prevent of the patients in their clinic; 94.8% of them (n=201) thought the patients should be evaluated for the risk of falling; 87.7% of the participants (n=186) noted patients or their family are trained for the risk of falling in their department. Furthermore, the practices that they performed to avoid the patients’ falling down are noted; 98.1% of them (n=208) remarked raising the bed borders, 58.9% of the nurses (n=125) stated to keep the hospital attendant with the patient.

Conclusion:

The result of evaluation of the measures taken by the nurses against the risk of patient falling was determined using a scale for the falling to prevent of the patients, education of patient and/or their family, raising the bed borders, stated to keep the hospital attendant with the patient in Okmeydani Training and Research Hospital.

Keywords: nursing, patient falls, patient safety