Preventing Hospital Falls: Optimal Screening

For the experimental group hospitals, we shall replace the old Falls Risk Assessment Tool (called FRATA) with a new form (called FRATB) that does not assign a score to falls risk screening yet includes the other elements. The "intervention" is filling in the FRAT forms and will be done within 24 hours after a patient is admitted and then repeated during the hospital stay if the falls risk changes. The FRAT takes approximately 5-10 minutes for nurses and health professionals to fill in. For the intervention, the actual risk screening assessment form used by healthcare professionals shall contain information needed to assign ratings. The procedure will be for the registered nurses and other registered health professionals to fill in the risk screening assessment at the patient admission and then repeat filling in the form if the patient status changes. They will do this by meeting with the individual hospital patients, reading the history and making an informed decision about risk. The location where the intervention occurs will always be an Australian hospital or rehabilitation facility. An independent data monitoring committee will monitor falls in the included hospitals. An independent assessor will monitor fidelity by cross checking at least 20% of the medical histories for the people found to fall.