Falls in Older Adults I/P units Team presentation: Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership Trust

Co-brand logo here Welcome We are a mental health trust with 8 later life wards, one closed last June. Our falls are variable but we have a population that are at least three times as likely to fall as those without cognition issues. Our service users are admitted to unfamiliar environments with late stages of dementia or acutely unwell with their MH. We use medications that are high risk for falls and many have physical health needs as well. We have been working on reducing falls for the last few years and they have been slowly reducing or staying steady and so recently moved our focus to frequent fallers as they make up a majority of fall numbers. All admissions have a MFRA completed that relates to their care plan and we review the falls on wards regularly Regular review has identified medications as an issue and we are working on increasing the time between falls in the frequent fallers

Situation Co-brand logo here Our aim is to reduce the number of falls across later life wards Sign up to safety priority Reduce falls by 50% (Very ambitious) Reducing falls that result in harm and increasing the time between frequent falls are additional outcome meaasures

Background Main title slide page Key Elements : Co-brand logo here Key Elements : Raising awareness of falls Improving the incident form completion Developing the MFRA to be added to electronic system Adding the post falls checklist PDSA cycles initially on falls training, falls leaflet, communication chart, review group. None more recently but still use process

Driver Diagram

Data – Total Number of Falls Main title slide page Data – Total Number of Falls Co-brand logo here

Data – Falls SI’s

Assessment The greatest improvement has come from continued focussing on falls awareness and their management Identification of frequent fallers and focussing on increasing the time between falls rather than reducing the number . An improvement has come in some areas from a MDT approach and review of medications. Our biggest challenges are changes in staffing with staff not knowing patients

Recommendation Co-brand logo here Working on having a weekly review of falls as a team and what method of doing this works best – testing currently across teams Recommendations are to keep on going ! Needs regular updates and training . Standardisation of medication reviews as we use high risk medication in our population Being aware of comorbidities.

Thank you for listening Co-brand logo here Thank you for listening Welcome Main title for slide set Optional sub title or name