Implementation of a Multifactorial Fall Intervention Model in Hospital: a Longitudinal Before-and-after Controlled Study From 2015 to 2018

Abstract

Background: Falls are serious public health problems associated with irreversible health consequences and substantial economic burden. To effectively reduce the incidence of falls and mitigate fall-related injuries, we designed and verified a multifactorial fall intervention model.Methods: The current study was a longitudinal before-and-after controlled investigation including 3 phases with clinical characteristics of fall patients retrospectively identified in phase 1, a multifactorial fall intervention model designed in phase 2 and prospectively evaluated in phase 3. Phase 1 and 2 were conducted based on 153,601 hospitalized patients between January 2015 and December 2016. Phase 3 was carried out based on 171,776 hospitalized patients between January 2017 and December 2018. The Pearson Chi-squared test was used to compare categorical variables and the Mann-Whitney non-parametric test was utilized for one-way ordered data.Results: In phase 1, baseline characteristics of 491 fall patients revealed that inpatients falls were highly associated with the age, medication and disease. In phase 2, a new multifactorial fall intervention model covering measures for fall prevention, fall-onset management and continuous improvement was developed. Phase 3 recorded a total of 396 falls and demonstrated a remarkably declined fall rate (Reduction in falls by 0.09%, p<0.001) and fall rate per 1000 patient-days (Reduction in falls/1000 patient-days by 0.07‰, p<0.001) as compared with phase 1. The adjusted incident rate ratio of fall was 1.443 (95%CI: 1.263-1.647) (Phase 1 vs. Phase 3). Furthermore, the occurrence and the severity of fall injuries in phase 3 were significantly lower than that in phase 1 (Z=-4.426, p<0.001). More specifically, the number of uninjured falls accounted for 42.42% in phase 3 in comparison of 32.99% in phase 1.Conclusions: This multifactorial fall intervention model exhibited favorable effect on reducing the occurrence of fall and fall injuries.