i Engaging as an innovative approach to engage patients in their own fall prevention care

Decreasing patient fall injuries during hospitalization continues to be a challenge at the bedside. Empowering patients to become active participants in their own fall prevention care could be a solution. In a previous study, elderly patients recently discharged from a United States hospital expressed a need for nurses to give and repeat directives about fall prevention; when the nurse left a brochure on the topic, but did not provide any (or limited) verbal explanations about the content or the importance of the information, the patient felt that the information was insufficient. To address patients’ needs, we developed “i Engaging”, a Web-based software application for use at the bedside. i Engaging is an innovative approach that is used to engage patients in their own fall prevention care during hospital stays. The application was designed based on the assumption that patients are the best and most critical sources of information about their health status. i Engaging has not yet been tested in clinical trials.