Systematic review of fall risk screening tools for older patients in acute hospitals

Abstract

The identified tools do not demonstrate predictive values as high as needed for identifying older inpatients at risk for falls. For this reason, no tool can be recommended for fall detection. More research is needed to evaluate fall risk screening tools for older inpatients.

Post-hoc validation of the Conley Scale in predicting the risk of falling with older in-hospital medical patients: findings from a multicentre longitudinal study

“…Some authors [7] have stated that identifying modifiable risk factors may be more useful than adopting fall-risk screening tools. In contrast, other authors [9,12,13] have suggested the use of quick, reliable, and valid fall-risk tools to identify high-risk patients and to trigger further assessment and related interventions. However, it may be difficult to choose the appropriate tool since few tools have been properly validated using prospective studies [14].…”

“…In addition, no single tool can be recommended for all patients within each setting [11]. As far as the hospital setting is concerned, neither recent systematic reviews [11,13,15] nor international guidelines [16] have identified tools that can be generalized to all categories of acute hospital inpatients. Therefore, single tools need to be validated before being used in a given specific population and setting.…”

Medication-related inpatient falls: a critical review

“…To date, no reports have been published in the literature involving specific medications related to inpatient falls without age restriction. Clearly, in a hospital setting, patients are exposed to a wide range of medications and specific conditions that may contribute towards altering the risk of falling (Matarese et al, 2014). The aim of this study is to carry out a thorough assessment of the literature available regarding the relationship between medication and inpatient falls, regardless of the age of patients.…”

Development of the Sydney Falls Risk Screening Tool in brain injury rehabilitation: A multisite prospective cohort study

“…Predicting falls in inpatient settings, however, is complex. This is partly due to the predictive efficacy of FRST items being dependent on patient setting and diagnosis‐related group (DRG) (Matarese, Ivziku, Bartolozzi, Piredda, & Marinis, ; Oliver et al., ). This results in FRSTs having a “limited clinical utility when used outside the context of the original population” (Aranda‐Gallardo, de Luna‐Rodriguez, Canca‐Sanchez, Moya‐Suarez, & Morales‐Asencio, , p. 1949).…”