i Engaging as an innovative approach to engage patients in their own fall prevention care

Abstract

Decreasing patient fall injuries during hospitalization continues to be a challenge at the bedside. Empowering patients to become active participants in their own fall prevention care could be a solution. In a previous study, elderly patients recently discharged from a United States hospital expressed a need for nurses to give and repeat directives about fall prevention; when the nurse left a brochure on the topic, but did not provide any (or limited) verbal explanations about the content or the importance of the information, the patient felt that the information was insufficient. To address patients’ needs, we developed “i Engaging”, a Web-based software application for use at the bedside. i Engaging is an innovative approach that is used to engage patients in their own fall prevention care during hospital stays. The application was designed based on the assumption that patients are the best and most critical sources of information about their health status. i Engaging has not yet been tested in clinical trials.

Engaging Patients in Their Care Versus Obscurantism

“…During an informal meeting related to seniors' risks for falling and how to engage them in fall prevention care, held at a senior center in the northwest United States, an elderly woman offered her comments after testing a patient engagement tool (Tzeng & Yin, ) to help the authors gain a full understanding of the meaning of patient engagement in health care. She shared with us: “It's all about me!” She expanded to say that when using the patient engagement tool, the process—by centering on herself, her fall risks, and the things she could do to prevent falls—made her put herself first.…”

“…During an informal meeting related to seniors' risks for falling and how to engage them in fall prevention care, held at a senior center in the northwest United States, an elderly woman offered her comments after testing a patient engagement tool (Tzeng & Yin, 2014) to help the authors gain a full understanding of the meaning of patient engagement in health care. She shared with us: "It's all about me!"…”

i Engaging User Testing

“…8 In this user-testing study, 3 features were tested on 10-in touch screen Android tablets: (1) an inpatient fall risk assessment, which identifies risk factors; (2) a set of approaches and tasks that are selected by patients that they can do themselves to prevent falls for each identified risk factor; and (3) the capability of creating an individualized fall prevention plan and printing this off for the patient. 7 The i Engaging prototype was developed on the basis of the patient empowerment framework described by Gross,9 which emphasizes that patients must be empowered by being informed, active, and collaborative participants in their own care. Meanwhile, health care providers must provide the skill and guidance needed to help patients meet their goals.…”

Factors associated with falls in hospitals: outcomes for nursing care

“…It is important to assess every patient's risk factors (Katsulis et al, 2010;McKechnie et al, 2017) and use this information for prevention (Lang et al, 2014;Twibell et al, 2015). It is important to strengthen patients' active role in healthcare (Twibell et al, 2015;Tzeng and Yin, 2014). Nurses' knowledge and experience may be of great importance in decreasing the risks of falls (Barrett et al, 2017;King et al, 2018;Luzia et al, 2018).…”