Patient Falls and Fall Injury in an Urban Public Hospital

Patient falls are an extremely common problem and a major cause of injury, death and hospitalisation in acute care. In Australia there were 336 fall-related deaths in a 12-month period and 26,338 falls-related hospitalisations, an age-standardised rate of 960.7 per 100,000 population in 2017.

medical alert system fall detection for seniors Falls can be caused by biological risk factors such as advanced age, decreased mobility, muscle weakness and vision impairment, or by health conditions such as arthritis, dementia, depression or neurological disease. Behavioural risk factors include a person's actions, emotions or choices and may be related to medication effects, environment and other aspects of the patient's condition and activities.

Developing and maintaining a fall prevention program requires understanding of the factors that contribute to falls, as well as the impact of those factors on the patient. Medical alert Identifying, reducing and mitigating the risk of falls for all patients can help to prevent injury, illness, disability, premature mortality and hospitalisation.

The aim of this study was to examine the incidence of patient falls and fall injury in an urban public hospital. Administrative patient data and fall incident reports from 1999 to 2003 were examined and summarized using frequencies, proportions, means and standard deviations.

Severity of falls was assessed by a severity assessment code (SAC) which included high (causing serious harm or death), medium (causing moderate or minor harm) and low (causing no harm). Univariable and multivariable generalised ordinal logistic regression models were used to quantify the magnitude of the effects of potential risk factors on severity of falls at 5% level of significance.