Every nurse dreads the time when their patient falls. You learn the proper technique to safely catch a patient and ease them to the floor without injuring yourself. You pray to the fall gods that you never have to actually remember how to perform this skill appropriately. I'm lucky that I work in Pediatrics and most of my patients are easy to catch (or are clumsy enough that falling is normal for them) or have their parents around them 24/7 to monitor them. I have heard stories of patients falling out of their cribs because Mom and Dad left the siderail down. I've witnessed a few falls but nothing significant.
I do remember a time, when I was pregnant with Emmy, that a fall happened. One of our BMT kids (Bone Marrow Transplant) was in the bathroom when the emergency light came on from her room. At the time, our unit was quite small so everyone was there to react. Being like 27 weeks pregnant, my charge nurse told me that I had to stay out of the room because I was going to be useless and my belly would just get in the way (in the most loving way you could say that statement). The patient was a teenager so I really couldn't be picking her up. Everyone was hustling and bustling and I was just standing there in the nurses station. Then a head peeked out and asked me to call a Rapid Response. So I called the code number only for the security guy to hang up on me mid call. Who does that?!?!?! Who hangs up when someone is trying to get the Rapid Response Team? I guess they really wanted the situation to escalate to a full blown Code Blue. So I called back, finally got someone to listen to me, gave the unit and room number and just waited for RRT to show up. The patient was 100% fine. She probably vagal'd while she was in the bathroom. She had just gotten either pain meds, Phenergan, or Ativan. I can't remember now. But she was okay.
Not the most intense or exciting fall story but it's the best I've got.
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