Reducing inpatient falls: Human factors & ergonomics offers a novel solution by designing safety from the patients’ perspective

Patients feel safe in the hospital and perceive they are less likely to fall whereas the opposite can be true if weakness, confusion and/or altered elimination issues are experienced as a result of symptoms, medication and/or procedures. A previous editorial from Grealish and Chaboyer (2015) outlined the scale and scope of this problem with an excellent argument for improving nursing care by valuing essential needs including ambulation, hydration, nutrition and elimination. However, despite many interventions (and models of nursing care) to improve assessment, monitoring and communication (Hignett, 2010), there has been little evidence of sustained reductions in either the number of falls or severity of injuries over the last 60 years (Oliver et al., 2007).