You would think hospitals are safe places. And they generally are.
Yet injuries do happen *in* hospitals. And the # 1 injury is falling down, as this chilling excerpt from WBUR in Boston relates:
It had been a typical Friday afternoon in the summer. “All of a sudden, out of nowhere, we heard a humongous thud,” recalled Nurse Ellen Beckwith, who had been working on that floor.“So we all went running and this little lady had gotten up — and we’re not sure if she had stood and turned, or just stood and fell — but fell backwards,” Beckwith said. “We have closets that have a metal sill, and she had hit the back of her head on that sill.”
The patient who had fallen was 90 years old. At first, she seemed fine. She had a lump on the back of her head. But she was awake and talking, and her only complaint was a sore back. An hour and a half later, that all changed.
“All of a sudden she went unresponsive and vomited, and she was never responsive after that,” Beckwith said. “She died not long into the early morning hours.”
Read the full story at http://www.wbur.org/2009/08/25/falling-down.