Leadership is a very challenging task in any profession. In nursing, leadership plays a very important role in ensuring that the health care practitioners execute their duties in a professional way. Leaders must possess specific traits that equip them with the right set of skills for the smooth running of the processes. Patient fall accounts for many accidents in the health care setting. The committee to sit in the development of strategies to reduce patient falls and bring down costs related with patient falls must possess knowledge on occupational safety and health. The knowledge on occupational safety and health will allow the committee members to formulate policies that promote health and safety in the workplace. The members who join the committee will have the responsibility of guiding the required change in the health care facility (Beach et al., 2006).
They should have financial management skills that will allow them formulate cost effective policies. The policy developed by the committee must address issues of accountability of care delivery. The two specialists to include in the committee are the physical therapist and a case manager. They will help in developing a policy for patient fall. Physical therapist will help in explaining to family and patient how to prevent fall and how to do everyday activity to prevent fall. They will help in teaching the patient how to move around the house to prevent falls. Prevention is a better intervention to patient falls. The other is the case manager, to supply equipment at home like a cane, walker, and bedside commode, follow up nurse, physical and occupational therapy for patient at home. The committee must formulate a cost effective policy to implement changes that will reduce falls. The committee will aim at eliminating all factors that lead to falls in the care facility of the elderly. Patients need to live in safe environments and someone must always be there to assist them when they need help.
Professional nurses require skills and leadership traits that ensure collection of evidence from research. The skills allow the nurse to make informed decisions guided by evidence obtained from research. The committee that aims to develop cost effective strategies must follow all the steps in order to acquire and review literature (Bittner & Gravlin, 2009). The steps involved include assembling of the committee. The committee develops a work plan that will guide all the operations. The committee then gathers all the data concerning patient falls.
The will gather information from the hospitalized patients and the ones in care facilities. Data collection will occur in form of direct questions to the patients involved in falls. Other information and data will come from the hospital records. The data collected from the patients helps the committee in formulating the policy that will prevent and reduce cases of falls. The search for evidence involves exclusion and inclusion rules. Data analysis and synthesis are the final steps that the committee engages. The committee uses the collected data to come up with a policy in the facility to reduce patient falls.
References
Bittner, N. P., & Gravlin, G. (2009). Critical thinking, delegation, and missed care in nursing practice. Journal of Nursing Administration, 39(3), 142-146.
Beach, M. C., Saha, S., & Cooper, L. A. (2006). The role and relationship of cultural competence and patient-centeredness in health care quality (Vol. 36). Commonwealth Fund.
