Perception: A Critical Analysis of the Hospitalized Patients on Falls

There is an estimate of 700,000 to one million hospitalized patients who have a fall each year. Fall can lead to injury and prolong hospitalization. Patients have their own perception about falls and falls prevention measures. In order to prevent falls, nurses do perform fall risk assessment for all vulnerable hospitalized patients. But do not take into consideration the perception of patients on falls. The primary objective of the study was to correlate fall related perception of patients and nurses fall risk assessment. A descriptive correlational research design was used for the study. The study was conducted on patients who were at risk for fall and admitted in the general surgical wards of a tertiary care Centre. Study subjects were in the age group of 17- 65 years, spoke Tamil, Hindi or English and those with scores between 1 – 10 in the nurses fall risk assessment were included in the study. Those who had cognitive deficits, dementia, delirium and not ambulatory were excluded from the study. A simple random sampling method was used in recruiting study sample. A written consent was obtained from the patients who consented to participate. Following this a self- administered Fall-related Perceptions questionnaire was handed over to them in a language of their preference. Majority of the study participants were in the age group of 51-60 years. Gender distribution of males were high as 80.4%. About 42.7% were educated and 92.2% were employed and 92.4% had an annual income of less than Rs. 10000. Those who had undergone surgeries were 68.4% and none of the study subjects had a history of fall in the past. It was found that there is a positive relationship between the patients perception on the likelihood of falling and the nurses fall risk assessment.(r value = .261 p = .000 ).