Predictive Performance of the KINDER 1 Fall Risk Assessment Tool in a Regional Health System.

Area of Science:

• Emergency Medicine
• Patient Safety
• Clinical Assessment Tools

Background:

• Emergency departments (EDs) face challenges in fall risk assessment due to unique patient factors.
• Existing inpatient fall risk tools have limited validation in the ED setting.
• The KINDER 1 Fall Risk Assessment Tool was piloted to address this gap.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the predictive performance of the KINDER 1 Fall Risk Assessment Tool.
• To assess the tool's accuracy in identifying fall risk in an emergency department population.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective cohort study design.
• Data collected from 10 EDs during an electronic pilot of the KINDER 1 tool (November 2023 - April 2024).
• Inclusion of adult ED visits with a completed KINDER 1 assessment; analysis of 64,811 assessments.

Main Results:

• The KINDER 1 tool demonstrated a sensitivity of 77.5% and specificity of 75.8%.
• Fall prevalence in the analyzed cohort was 0.06%.
• The study included 40 patient falls in the final analysis.

Conclusions:

• The KINDER 1 tool exhibits acceptable predictive performance for fall risk in the ED.
• Further research is needed to compare KINDER 1 with other ED fall risk tools (Hester Davis Scale, Memorial ED Fall Risk Assessment Tool).
• Investigating the usability of different tools for nurses in triage settings is recommended.