During Patient safety week, the FallSafe collaborative, which covers a range of wards in acute hospitals, community hospitals, and mental health units over the South Central region, met for a day in Portsmouth to share progress and talk about next steps.
FallSafe is funded by the Healthcare Foundation. In each of the 17 participating wards and units a local ‘FallSafe’ lead has been appointed - most are senior staff nurses or junior sisters or charge nurses – to act as a change agent for their own ward, which can then become a model to other wards.
In these regular get-togethers they receive training in the evidence base for falls prevention and in improvement methodologies that will help them put this into practice.
Today, the FallSafe leads were reflecting on how their first steps have been going, with plenty of debate on both successes and challenges. The main evidence based intervention for the day was medication review with an excellent presentation from Adam Darowski, and left everyone enthusiastic about tackling inappropriate prescribing of night sedation.
What always strikes me whenever I spend time with the FallSafe leads is firstly how undented their enthusiasm is, despite real difficulties in fitting in their measurements and improvement cycles alongside their usual heavy ward workload.
Also, what great support they give each other – both online and person-to-person they are unfailingly generous in the support and encouragement they give each other.
Frances Healey
Joint Head of Patient Safety (Response/Medical Specialties)