Preventing Hospital Falls: Feasibility of Care Workforce Redesign to Optimise Patient Falls Education

Objective: To examine the feasibility of using allied health assistants to deliver patient falls prevention education within 48 h after hospital admission.

Design And Setting: Feasibility study with hospital patients randomly allocated to usual care or usual care plus additional patient falls prevention education delivered by supervised allied health assistants using an evidence-based scripted conversation and educational pamphlet.

Participants: (i) allied health assistants and (ii) patients admitted to participating hospital wards over a 20-week period.

Outcomes: (i) feasibility of allied health assistant delivery of patient education; (ii) hospital falls per 1,000 bed days; (iii) injurious falls; (iv) number of falls requiring transfer to an acute medical facility.

Results: 541 patients participated (median age 81 years); 270 control group and 271 experimental group. Allied health assistants (n = 12) delivered scripted education sessions to 254 patients in the experimental group, 97% within 24 h after admission. There were 32 falls in the control group and 22 in the experimental group. The falls rate was 8.07 falls per 1,000 bed days in the control group and 5.69 falls per 1,000 bed days for the experimental group (incidence rate ratio = 0.66 (95% CI 0.32, 1.36; P = 0.26)). There were 2.02 injurious falls per 1,000 bed days for the control group and 1.03 for the experimental group. Nine falls (7 control, 2 experimental) required transfer to an acute facility. No adverse events were attributable to the experimental group intervention.

Conclusions: It is feasible and of benefit to supplement usual care with patient education delivered by allied health assistants.