Research on Falls

Falls in the hospital affect young as well as older patients, are often unassisted, and involve elimination-related activities. Further studies are necessary to prevent hospital falls and reduce fall injury rates. The majority of inpatient fall studies is retrospective and relies solely on data from medical records or incident reports. Information from risk management databases is often incomplete and may not identify potential causal factors for falls. Most studies often focused only on fall risk factors and did not examine contributing factors or circumstances of the falls (e.g., what triggered the fall).

Salgado, R., Lord, S. R., Packer, J., & Ehrlich, F. (1994). Factors associated with falling in elderly hospital patients. Gerontology. 40(2), 325–334