Centre for Policy on Ageing



Fall risk-assessment tools compared with clinical judgment — an evaluation in a rehabilitation ward
Author(s)	Michael Vassallo, Lynn Poynter, Jagdish C Sharma
Journal title	Age and Ageing, vol 37, no 3, May 2008
Pages	pp 277-281
Source	http://www.ageing.oupjournals.org
Keywords	Falls ; At risk ; Wandering ; Evaluation ; Rehabilitation ; Screening.
Annotation	200 patients admitted to a geriatric rehabilitation hospital had a STRATIFY and a Downton Fall Risk Assessment and were observed for wandering behaviour. Wandering had a predictive accuracy of 78%, with 157/200 identified compared to 100/200 using the Downton score of 93/200 using STRATIFY. The Downton and STRATIFY tools demonstrated predictive accuracies pf 50% and 46.5% respectively. Sensitivity for predicting falls using wandering was 43.1%, significantly worse than Downton (92.9%) and STRATIFY (82.3%). While the study showed that clinical observation had a higher accuracy than the two risk assessment tools, it was significantly less sensitive implying that fewer patients who fell were correctly identified as being at risk. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-080618212 A
Classmark	OLF: CA3: EPC: 4C: LM: 3V
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.