The Baptist Health High-Risk Falls Assessment: One Assessment Fits All

Area of Science:

• Psychiatric Nursing
• Patient Safety
• Clinical Assessment Tools

Background:

• Accurate fall risk assessment is crucial for psychiatric inpatients.
• Existing fall risk assessments often lack sufficient sensitivity and specificity for this population.
• The Baptist Health High Risk Falls Assessment (BHHRFA) is a tool typically used in medical-surgical settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic odds ratio of the BHHRFA.
• To determine the utility of a medical-surgical fall risk assessment in a psychiatric inpatient setting.
• To provide data on the diagnostic performance of the BHHRFA in psychiatric patients.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective data collection from 5910 psychiatric inpatients.
• Application of the Baptist Health High Risk Falls Assessment (BHHRFA) to the patient data.
• Statistical analysis to calculate sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic odds ratio.

Main Results:

• The BHHRFA demonstrated acceptable sensitivity (0.68).
• The BHHRFA showed acceptable specificity (0.70).
• An acceptable diagnostic odds ratio of 4.964 was observed for the BHHRFA.

Conclusions:

• The BHHRFA is a potentially viable tool for assessing fall risk in psychiatric inpatients.
• The findings suggest that the BHHRFA can be utilized to identify high-risk patients in psychiatric settings.
• Further validation in diverse psychiatric populations may be warranted.