Bridging the gap between research and practice: Review of a targeted hospital inpatient fall prevention programme

Abstract Objective: Falls among older inpatients are frequent and have negative consequences. In this study, the effectiveness of a fall prevention programme in reducing falls and fall injuries in an acute hospital was studied. Design: Retrospective audit. Setting: The Northern Hospital, an acute, metropolitan, hospital in Australia. Intervention: A multi-factorial fall prevention programme that included establishment of a multidisciplinary committee, risk assessment of all patients on a??high-riska?? wards and targeted interventions for patients identified as high risk. Main outcome measures: Fall and fall injury rates per 1000 occupied bed-days were analysed using generalised additive models (GAM) and, because of the presence of autocorrelation, generalised additive mixed models (GAMM), respectively. Results: During the 9-year observation of 271a??095 patients, there were 2910 falls and 843 fall injuries. The GAM predicted rate of falls was stable in the 3 years after the programme was implemented, increased in 2006, then decreased between October 2006 and December 2007 from 4.13 (95 CI 3.65 to 4.67) to 2.83 (95 CI 2.24 to 3.59; pa?S=a?S0.005). The GAMM predicted rate of fall injuries reduced from 1.66 (95 CI 1.24 to 2.21) to 0.61 (95 CI 0.43 to 0.88) after programme implementation (p