Review article
https://doi.org/10.24141/1/3/1/8
Review of Fall Risk Assessment Scales
Roberto Licul
; General hospital Pula, Croatia
Tatjana Matteoni
; General hospital Pula, Croatia
Martina Močenić
; General hospital Pula, Croatia
Abstract
Patient falls in a hospital setting are adverse events in health care institution and pose as one of indicators of patient safety and quality indicators when it comes to the accreditation system. About one third of all falls cause some form of injury to the patient, and directly contribute to the lower healthcare quality level, inducing thereby also a variety of mental and somatic symptoms experienced by the patient. Therefore, the necessity of preventing patient falls is an important duty of all healthcare professionals, especially nurses. One of the tools for assessing the risk of falls risk is a standardized fall risk assessment scale. This paper presents four such scales, as follows: the Morse Falls Scale, the STRATIFY Scale, the Hendrich II Scale and the Johns Hopkins Fall Risk Assessment Tool. Each of them has certain advantages and disadvantages, all of them preferably having as high sensitivity and specificity as possible. An ideal scale should be simple to use, accurate, not time-consuming and easily implementable into clinical practice without staff overload. A result provided by a scale is a numerical value, which assesses patients’ risk of falling (low, medium, high ...); such a risk assessment should always be followed by the appropriate preventive measures.
Keywords
patient safety; fall assessment; in-hospital falls; healthcare quality
Hrčak ID:
183319
URI
Publication date:
26.6.2017.
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