Falls are one source of preventable hospital injury. Although most patients who fall are not hurt, a risk of serious injury is involved. The data in PtFalls represent the number of patient falls per month over a 28-month period in a 19-bed AIDS unit at a major metropolitan hospital.
a. Construct a c chart for the number of patient falls per month. Is the process of patient falls per month in a state of statistical control?
b. What effect would it have on your conclusions if you knew that the AIDS unit was started only one month prior to the beginning of data collection?
c. Compile a list of factors that might produce special cause variation in this problem?