Characteristics of injurious falls among hospitalized patients: a retrospective descriptive study

To describe the characteristics of injurious falls among hospitalized patients from 2023 to 2025 in our hospital and to provide descriptive evidence to inform fall prevention and patient safety management.

A retrospective descriptive study was conducted using data extracted from the hospital information system. Injurious fall cases among hospitalized patients from 2023 to 2025 were identified. Two independent researchers collected data on patient characteristics, event characteristics (including location, shift, low nurse staffing periods, clinical department, classification based on a hospital-based nursing adverse event grading system, and injury severity), and reporting nurse characteristics (including gender, age, educational background, professional title, job position, and number of reports). Data consistency was verified, and descriptive statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 25.0. The unit of analysis was hospitalization encounters, and fall events were analyzed at the event level.

A total of 341,959 hospitalization encounters were recorded during 2023-2025. A total of 257 fall-related adverse events were reported during this period, of which 130 (50.58%) were injurious falls. Most affected patients were older adults, with those aged 61-80 years accounting for 52.31%, and 56.15% were male. Falls most frequently occurred in patient rooms (49.23%) and bathrooms (20.00%), followed by ward public areas (16.92%) and outside the ward or during inter-ward movement (13.08%). The majority of events were classified as grade III according to a hospital-based nursing adverse event grading system (88.46%), and most injuries were grade I severity (80.00%). Departments with higher numbers of reported injurious falls included hematology, oncology, gastroenterology, neurosurgery, and general medicine. A total of 66.92% of events occurred during low nurse staffing periods, with a relatively balanced distribution across shifts. A total of 111 reporting nurses were involved; most were female (90.99%), aged 31-40 years (55.86%), held a bachelor's degree (78.38%), and were mainly nurse practitioners or senior nurses (72.98%). Most nurses reported only one event (87.39%).

Injurious falls were more frequently observed among older patients and occurred most often in patient rooms and bathrooms, with a higher proportion of events observed in several clinical departments and during periods defined as having limited nursing resources. Reporting nurses were predominantly young to middle-aged nurses with intermediate professional titles, and most reported only a single event. This study provides a systematic descriptive summary of injurious fall characteristics from the perspectives of patients, events, and reporting staff, which may provide information for hospital-based patient safety management.