Heights of Occupied Patient Beds: A Possible Risk Factor for Inpatient Falls.

Krista Cady
JC Nursing Program
Tuesday Afternoon Lab

The purpose of the study was to find out the average height on occupied hospital beds in
a medical ward, and to see if there was any correlation between the working height, times, and if
the patient was on any kind of fall precautions.
The sample in the study was 32 occupied beds in an acute care setting of a Michigan
medical center. The time the study was performed was October 2008. The study did not take
patient demographics into considerations so no patient profile was needed.
The research methods were to measure occupied beds during different set times of the
day when the patient was not receiving any medical care that required bedside staff. They
performed the measurements on two week days and one weekend day at three specific times on
each day. These days were all in the same week, and collected by the same person using the
same measurements for all nine times.
Some significant findings shown were that the beds were generally left around an inch
higher on the weekends than they were on the weekdays. The study indicated that the possible
reason for this could be that there are fewer nurses scheduled on the weekends, and that they feel
rushed by low staffing and visitors keeping them from spending as much time with the patient

than they normally would. They found a significant difference between the heights of beds for
patients on fall precaution and those without. The patients that were on fall precautions actually
had higher bed heights, around an inch, that those who were not on precautions.
The implications for this could be that as medical facilities become under staffed; we may
be unintentionally putting the patients at risk by not making sure all of the beds are at the safest
height for the patients. The fact that they found the height of the fall precaution patients beds to
be higher at any time is negligent.

References
Tzeng, H., & Yin, C. (2008). Heights of occupied patient beds: a possible risk factor for inpatient
falls. Retrieved from Journal Of Clinical Nursing via online database, 17(11), 1503-1509.
doi:10.1111/j.1365-2702.2007.02086.x