Prevención de caídas en pacientes adultos mayores hospitalizados

Abstract

Introduction: The interventions performed by the nursing staff in the hospital are essential to prevent the elderly from suffering falls since they are more prone to suffer this type of accident, causing their disease to worsen. Objective: To perform a literature review on the prevention of falls in hospitalized elderly patients. Methodology: A narrative literature review was conducted in the following scientific databases: Scopus, ProQuest, Pubmed, Researchgate, EBSCO, Scielo, Medigraphic, Dialnet, and WHO documents, from the year 2016 to 2021. Results: Falls in the hospital areas of Japan, Spain, and Peru had a high percentage between 85.7% and 61.4% in the male gender. Among the complications that occurred more frequently were fractures, related to extrinsic factors; mobility problems with intrinsic factors, for their identification the Morse Scale, Barthel, Tinetti, and Downton were used, the different activities performed in nursing staff were: placing bracelets to identify the risk of falling, providing adequate lighting, placing objects within reach and maintaining cleanliness in the environment. Conclusion: The high percentage of falls continues to be one of the causes of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized older adults worldwide, therefore, it is necessary to update knowledge on the care of nursing personnel and the correct application of protocols, identifying extrinsic and intrinsic risk factors.

KEYWORDS: Risk factors, falls, elderly, interventions, nursing, scales