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The validity of three fall risk screening tools in an acute geriatric inpatient population
Mark Dominic Latt1,2, K Florence Loh3, Ludi Ge4
1Sydney Medical School, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Mark.Latt@email.cs.nsw.gov.au.
Aim:
We examined the validity of the Ontario Modified STRATIFY (OM) (St Thomas's Risk Assessment Tool in Falling Elderly Inpatients), The Northern Hospital Modified STRATIFY (TNH) and STRATIFY in predicting falls in an acute aged care unit.
Methods:
Data were collected prospectively from 217 people presenting consecutively and falls identified during hospitalisation.
Results:
Sensitivities of OM (80.0, 95% confidence interval (CI) 58.4 to 91.9%), TNH (85, CI 64.0 to 94.8%) and STRATIFY (80.0, CI 58.4 to 91.0%) were similar. The STRATIFY had higher specificity (61.4, CI 54.5 to 67.9%) than OM (37.1, CI 30.6 to 44.0%) and TNH (51.3, CI 44.3 to 58.2%). Accuracy (percentage of patients correctly classified as 'faller' or 'non-faller') was higher using STRATIFY (63.1, CI 56.5 to 69.3%) and TNH (54.4, CI 47.8 to 61.0%) than with OM (41.0, CI 34.7 to 47.7%, P < 0.0001).
Conclusion:
Screening tools have limited accuracy in identifying patients at high risk of falls.
