A CAMPAIGN to reduce the number of falls at East Lancashire’s hospitals has been declared a success.

NHS chiefs launched an awareness drive last year to combat the rate of slips, trips and falls across the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT) estate.

One 89-year-old patient died at the Royal Blackburn site in March 2015 when she fell after getting out of bed on an escalation ward, an inquest has previously heard.

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Managers at ELHT established a ‘falls collaborative’ late last year, using five wards, including a dementia unit, as pilot areas.

And after introducing a number of measures, trusts bosses have revealed the number of falls across wards C5, C10, C14, B20 and B22 has reduced by 36 per cent.

This means that there were 64 fewer falls between November 2015 and May 2016, compared to the equivalent six-month period the previous years. The falls rate across the trust has dropped by 19 per cent.

Jed Walton-Pollard, the trust’s divisional nursing director, said: “The issue of patient falls continues to be a key focus.

“Armed with evidence of how we reduced falls on the pilot wards, we can now share this information for the safety and protection of our in-patients.”

Bedside information was provided to assist staff regarding those more likely to be at risk of falls, safety cards were handed to patients and extra supervision offered during bathroom breaks.

Helen Howard, acute falls lead nurse, said: “Falls remain a cause of harm to patients in hospitals worldwide and can be difficult to eradicate. But the collaborative’s excellent work, and the best practice we have learned, will be put into practice on all our wards as we work hard to reduce falls to a minimum.”