Fall Prevention
Being sick in the hospital increases your chances of falling. You can fall from any of the following:
1. Medications you are taking can make, you dizzy and cause a fall.
2. Disturbances in your body systems due to illness or surgery can make you weak, dizzy or lose your balance and cause you to fall.
3. Your legs or knees can suddenly give out and make you fall. Illness, lack of activity and/or decreased food intake can cause weakness in your muscles and joints, especially your legs and knees.
4. Walking aids such as crutches, cane or walker can cause a fall if you're not used to them. Be very careful when walking with these devices.
5. Unfamiliar surroundings can confuse you at night or if lights are dim. You can bump against furniture, door or walls and fall.
Falling may cause small injuries like a lump on your head or a scrape or bruise on your skin. You can also fracture your skull or break a hip or a collarbone. Those injuries can cause you a lot of pain and make your stay in the hospital much longer.
What You Can Do
1. When getting out of bed, sit at the side of the bed for a few Minutes to get your balance before standing up.
2. Get up slowly from a sitting position, from a chair, bed, toilet or commode.
3. Do not make any sudden moves when walking around or when in a standing position.
4. Do not use, furniture with wheels, such as the overbed table, as support. These will move away from you and cause you to fall.
5. If you are in bed, don't reach down to pick something up from the floor. Most often, patients fall off the bed while doing this. Ask someone else to pick it up.
6. When picking up things from the floor, stand up slowly to avoid getting dizzy and losing your balance.
7. For male patients who stand at the bedside to use the urinal, have the bed at a level where you can sit down on it if you ever get dizzy or weak.
8. Many patients report slipping off the side of the bed and falling to the floor. Bare feet or house slippers with smooth soles can slip when you use your feet to push against the floor while your buttocks are halfway off the bed. To avoid this, have the bed at the lowest level. Always sit squarely on the bed, never at the edge, before lifting your feet off the floor. Also, ask for hospital socks with nonskid rubberized strips on the bottoms.
9. Use slippers with non-skid soles to avoid slipping on wet spots on the floor.
10. Ask the nurse to keep the light on in the bathroom at night.
11. If you think the bed is too narrow or that you might roll out, have the nurse put up the bedrails.
12. DON'T TAKE CHANCES. CALL AND WAIT FOR HELP AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.