Keywords
Patient safety
Accidents due to falls
Risk factors
Elderly
Copyright © | All rights reserved.
The journal holds the exclusive copyright for the publication of this article under the terms of Brazilian law 9610/98.
Partial reproduction
The use of parts of the texts, figures and questionnaire of the article is free, being mandatory the citation of the authors and journal.
Total reproduction
It is expressly prohibited and must be authorized by the journal.
Abstract
Objective: To analyze, through narrative review, the nursing strategies for preventing falls in hospitalized elderly patients. Bibliographic review: Falls are usually the result of a sum of factors, such as sudden failure of neural mechanisms, drug effects, environmental hazards and/or changes in balance, posture, gait, in the musculoskeletal system, among others. These events cause individual, social and institutional repercussions as they reduce the autonomy of the elderly, distance them from their social life and generate high costs for global health systems. Final considerations: Nurses need to routinely assess the risk of falling and develop a prevention plan for all patients who are cared for in the hospital environment. Hospital care institutions have the challenge of ensuring its non-occurrence through prevention programs. This study contributes to the theme insofar as it clarifies the main causes and alerts to the importance of prevention, showing that the damage associated with the occurrence of falls is considerable.