Hospital Inpatient Falls across Clinical Departments

Marcin Mikos, Tomasz Banas, Aleksandra Czerw, Bartłomiej Banas, Łukasz Strzępek and Mateusz Curyło
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Marcin Mikos: Department of Bioinformatics and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University, 30-701 Krakow, Poland
Tomasz Banas: Department of Gynaecology and Oncology, Jagiellonian University Medical College, 31-501 Krakow, Poland
Aleksandra Czerw: Department of Health Economics and Medical Law, Medical University of Warsaw, 02-091 Warsaw, Poland
Bartłomiej Banas: Private Surgical Medical Practice, 31-261 Krakow, Poland
Łukasz Strzępek: Department of General Surgery, Regional Public Hospital in Bochnia, 32-700 Bochnia, Poland
Mateusz Curyło: Orthopedic and Posttraumatic Rehabilitation Department, Medical University of Lodz, 90-419 Lodz, Poland

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 15, 1-10

Abstract: Background: Inpatient falls are common hospital adverse events. We aimed to determine inpatient fall rates in an urban public hospital and analyzed their characteristics across clinical departments. Methods: The study was conducted in a 350-bed urban, multi-specialty public hospital in the 2013–2019 period. Patient data were retrieved from the hospital’s standardized falls reporting system. Descriptive statistics and statistical tests: chi2 and ANOVA tests with multiple comparison tests (post-hoc analysis) were used. For fall incidence estimation a joint-point regression was applied. p -value of 0.05 was considered as statistically significant for all the calculations. Results: The highest prevalence of falls was reported in the rehabilitation and internal medicine wards (1.915% and 1.181%, respectively), the lowest in the orthopedic (0.145%) and rheumatology wards (0.213%) ( p < 0.001). The vast majority of falls took place in the late evening and during the night (56.711%) and were classified as bed falls (55.858%). The crude incidence rate (cIR) of falls was 6.484 per one thousand hospitalizations. In the 2013–2017 period, an increase in total cIR was observed, reaching the peak value in 2016; it was followed by a slight decline from 2017 to 2019, however, differences in changes were observed between the wards. Conclusion: Fall rates and trends as well as circumstances of inpatient falls varied significantly among clinical departments, probably due to differences in patient characteristics.

Keywords: fall assessment sheet; fall; elderly patients; hospitalization; risk management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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