What Is A Fall Risk Assessment?

A fall risk assessment is

used to find out if you have a low, moderate, or high risk of falling

. If the assessment shows you are at an increased risk, your health care provider and/or caregiver may recommend strategies to prevent falls and reduce the chance of injury.

How do you determine if a patient is a fall risk?

1. history of falling within the past year.
2. orthostatic hypotension.
3. impaired mobility or gait.
4. altered mental status.
5. incontinence.
6. medications associated with falls, such as sedative-hypnotics and blood pressure drugs.
7. use of assistive devices.

What does a fall risk assessment include?

Fall Risk Assessment

A risk assessment consists of

a falls history, medication review, physical examination, and functional and environmental assessments

.

What is fall risk screening?

The purpose of a falls risk screen is to:

listen to what happened and why you think you fell

.

identify risk factors that may have contributed to your fall

.

agree an action plan with you to reduce your risk of falling

, and harming yourself should you fall again.

What is a falls risk?

A falls risk factor is

something that increases an older person’s chance of falling

¹¹⁴


. Falls commonly result from a combination of risk factors

⁷⁷

as ‘the risk of falling increases with the number of risk factors that are present’

¹¹⁵

. The number of risk factors also increases as a person ages

¹¹⁵

.

What makes a patient a fall risk?

Identified risk factors for falls

Intrinsic factors include

blood pressure, orthostatics; cognition; vision; spasticity, rigidity

; strength; sensory deficit, cerebellar, parkinsonism; and musculoskeletal issues, antalgia. Extrinsic factors include medications, environment and other factors.

What are the 5 key steps in a falls risk assessment?

• 1: Identify the Hazards.
• 2: Decide Who Might Be Harmed and How.
• 3: Evaluate the Risks and Take Action to Prevent Them.
• 4: Record Your Findings.
• 5: Review the Risk Assessment.

When should a fall risk assessment be performed for a patient?

How often is the assessment of fall risk factors done? Consider performing a fall risk assessment in general acute care settings on admission, on transfer from one unit to another, with a significant change in a patient’s condition, or

after a fall

.

What is a fall rate?

Calculate falls as a rate (

the rate of falls per 1,000 occupied bed days

). This measure considers if the unit census is running high or low.

When should a fall risk assessment be completed?

A. Completing a fall risk assessment

as soon as possible

, and within 2 hours of admission decreases risk of falling through early risk identification.

What are the two groups of falls?

Falls are of two basic types:

elevated falls and same-level falls

. Same-level falls are most frequent, but elevated falls are more severe. Same-level falls are generally slips or trips. Injury results when the individual hits a walking or working surface or strikes some other object during the fall.

What should you check after a fall?

1. Check the patient’s breathing, pulse, and blood pressure. …
2. Check for injury, such as cuts, scrapes, bruises, and broken bones.
3. If you were not there when the patient fell, ask the patient or someone who saw the fall what happened.

What is the best fall risk assessment tool?

The

Berg Balance scale and Mobility Interaction Fall

chart showed stable and high specificity, while the Downton Fall Risk Index, Hendrich II Fall Risk Model, St. Thomas’s Risk Assessment Tool in Falling elderly inpatients, Timed Up and Go test, and Tinetti Balance scale showed the opposite results.

Who is at high risk for falls?

Adults older than 60 years of age

suffer the greatest number of fatal falls. 37.3 million falls that are severe enough to require medical attention occur each year.

Can the risk of falling be removed?

Doing

regular strength exercises and balance exercises

can improve your strength and balance, and reduce your risk of having a fall. This can take the form of simple activities such as walking and dancing, or specialist training programmes. … Exercises that can be carried out at home are also available.

How do you assess the risk of falls in the elderly?

1. Timed Up-and-Go (Tug). This test checks your gait. …
2. 30-Second Chair Stand Test. This test checks strength and balance. …
3. 4-Stage Balance Test. This test checks how well you can keep your balance.