Yu Ju Lin
Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taiwan
Title: Performance of fall risk factors assessment tool for predicting fall in hospital inpatients
Biography
Biography: Yu Ju Lin
Abstract
“Fall events” are common adverse events with the highest proportion in hospitalized patients that may not only result in physical and mental problems, but also increase the length of hospital stay and medical costs. This study aimed to investigate the predicting effect of fall risk assessment tools in hospitalized patients. In this retrospective study, we enrolled hospitalized patients with hospital stay greater than seven days from a medical center in Central Taiwan during January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015. Pediatric patients and patients with age less than 18-year-old were excluded. We collected all fall assessments and records by linking medical database. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the optimal cut-off point of the score of scale. Statistical analysis was performed using SAS 9.4 software. A total of 14,634 subjects were included in the study. This study found several factors were associated with increased risk of falls, including: patients over 65 years old, history of falls, visual impairment, mobility disorders and limb hemiplegia, physical weakness, and taking drugs that affect consciousness or activity. Finally, this study found that the predicting effect was similar between the scaled three-question scale and the original scale with nine questions, and the fall risk in hospitalized patients was not significantly different from the two scales. The study findings may be provided as an important basis of clinical practice for development of fall risk assessment tool. The assessment tool may help to accurately screen out the high risk group of falls, and then provide immediate interventional measures to prevent patients from falling.