Patient Falls Tip Sheet
The patient falls tip sheet emphasizes that most falls are preventable through proactive communication, patient and family engagement, environmental safety, appropriate mobility support and targeted fall‑prevention practices.
Who it’s for:
- Risk professionals and patient safety leaders
- Nursing leaders, bedside nurses, and frontline clinical teams
- Rehabilitation therapists and mobility specialists
- Quality, compliance, and clinical operations teams
- Medical staff leaders and interdisciplinary safety committees
What it can be used for:
- Standardizing fall‑prevention practices across units and care environments
- Strengthening documentation, communication, and patient/family engagement
- Supporting training, safety huddles, and competency refreshers
- Guiding audits, rounding, and targeted fall‑risk assessments
What’s inside:
- Situation: Falls cause frequent, serious injuries and are common sentinel events
- Background: Key contributors (handoffs, look-alike/sound-alike drugs, workflow gaps)
- Assessment: Falls occur everywhere, cause harm, and are often preventable
- Recommendations: Improve communication, support mobility, engage families, and address environment
Access the Tip Sheet
Falls cause frequent, serious injuries and are common sentinel events.
Related Resources
e-Learning
Identify and examine liability exposures and regulatory/legal requirements related to opioid prescribing.
e-Learning
Learn to identify patient safety events involving patients who are obese and learn strategies to ensure the safe care of this patient population.
Book
ASHRM foundational textbook covering the essentials of health care risk management, with chapters on patient safety, risk financing, the legal…
On-Demand Educational Webinars
This webinar discusses the key role risk managers play to prevent opioid-induced respiratory compromise.
On-Demand Educational Webinars
Best practices and a road map for those responsible for patient safety for how to design and implement a procedural sedation risk assessment.
e-Learning
This course will describe and discuss four principles as ethically foundational to the practice and realization of patient safety.