Factors associated with falls in hospitalized adult patients

Despite efforts in hospitals to identify patients at risk for falls and to prevent these incidents, falls among hospitalized patients are not a rare event and continue to be a major health care concern, occurring in approximately 700,000-1,000,000 hospitalized patients per year.

The purpose of this study was to examine intrinsic, extrinsic, and workforce factors that contribute to falls among hospitalized adult patients.

A retrospective correlational design was used to examine 160 patients admitted to a medical-surgical unit over the year 2012. Analytical weighting was applied to the study sample to conduct bivariate and multivariate analysis.

In multivariate analysis, the variables age, narcotic/sedative use, and overnight shift, significantly predicted the likelihood of a fall during the hospitalization. Cardiovascular disease, neuromusculoskeletal disease, evening shift, the implementation of fall prevention strategies and higher RN to unlicensed assistive personnel staffing ratios decreased the likelihood of a fall during the hospitalization. In addition, patients at high risk for falls using the Hendrich I fall scale were nearly 17% more likely to fall during the hospitalization.

Many factors influence the occurrence of a fall in hospitalized patients. Fall risk assessment and the implementation of fall prevention strategies are both effective strategies in the clinical area to identify and decrease the probability of a fall. The presence of the RN is significant in fall prevention in medical-surgical patients.