Abstract—In the hospital settings, falls occur for a wide scope
of reasons but most of the time they could be prevented.
Therefore, clinical supervision as a strategy to improve and
develop nurses’ knowledge and skills is crucial for a better
clinical practice. The aims of this quantitative, exploratory and
descriptive study were: to characterize the risk of falling of
hospitalized patients in a unit of the medicine department; to
relate the risk of falling with the patients’ personal attributes;
to analyze the compliance between the procedures for
monitoring, planning and execution of nursing care; to suggest
contributions for a clinical supervision model in nursing to
improve nurses’ skills in preventing falls. The population was
composed by all the patients of the selected unit who were
hospitalized from the 10th of February 2012 until the 9th of
April 2012. We had a convenience sample constituted by 132
patients who fitted the inclusion criteria. We collected data
through several procedures such as the application of a
questionnaire to assess the risk of fall accordingly to the falls
protocol implemented in the unit and the parameterization
defined in the nursing records system. The results pointed out
that 16,7% of patients showed “no risk of fall”, 48,5% had “low
risk of fall” and 34,8% had “high risk of fall”. We verify the
existence of non-conformities in the implementation of the falls
protocol, the application of the Morse Fall Scale, among others.
Thus, we recommend some contributions for a clinical
supervision model in nursing so nurses can develop their
knowledge and skills in preventing patients’ falls.
Index Terms—Clinical supervision, risk of fall, patients’
safety, quality of care.
Sandra Cruz, Luís Carvalho, and Barbara Lamas are with the Escola
Superior de Enfermagem do Porto, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal (e-mail:
sandracruz@esenf.pt, luiscarvalho@esenf.pt, ba_1928@hotmail.com).
Pedro Barbosa is with the Centro Hospitalar de São João, EPE, 4200-319
Porto, Portugal (e-mail: barbosapedro.ifm@gmail.com).
Cite: Sandra Cruz, Luís Carvalho, Bárbara Lamas, and Pedro Barbosa, "Improving Quality in the Patients‟ Risk of Fall Evaluation through Clinical Supervision," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 526-530, 2014.