Multimedia patient education for preventing accidental falls amongst older hospital patients

Patients in group one will watch a DVD and read a booklet which will educate patients on how to minimise falls risk in hospital. In addition, this group will receive their usual care. Patients in group two will also receive this intervention and in addition, will also receive further face to face personal education from a health professional. The health professionals will have discretion over the duration of each patient session - session lengths will range between 15 and 35 minutes. The total number of sessions provided through the content of the program is intended to be covered in 4 sessions and will vary between patients. The variability will range from 1 to 4 sessions. This is reflective of differences between and within individual patients' conditions such that on one day they may not feel well enough to have a session, or only be able to manage a short duration of discussion, but on other days may tolerate longer sessions. Up to three follow-up sessions will be provided in a week. Education sessions will occur during admission at a varied time according to a patient’s medical condition. Therefore patients will receive up to 4 sessions over their whole admission, but times of delivery and frequency of delivery will vary from patient to patient.