Introduction: Despite efforts in hospitals to identify patients at risk for falls and to prevent these incidents, falls
among hospitalized patients are not a rare event and continue to be amajor health care concern, occurring in approximately
700,000–1,000,000 hospitalized patients per year.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine intrinsic, extrinsic, and workforce factors that contribute to
falls among hospitalized adult patients.
Methods: A retrospective correlational design was used to examine 160 patients admitted to a medical–surgical
unit over the year 2012. Analyticalweightingwas applied to the study sample to conduct bivariate and multivariate
analysis.
Findings: In multivariate analysis, the variables age, narcotic/sedative use, and overnight shift, significantly predicted
the likelihood of a fall during the hospitalization. Cardiovascular disease, neuromusculoskeletal disease,
evening shift, the implementation of fall prevention strategies and higher RN to unlicensed assistive personnel
staffing ratios decreased the likelihood of a fall during the hospitalization. In addition, patients at high risk for
falls using the Hendrich I fall scale were nearly 17% more likely to fall during the hospitalization.
Conclusions: Many factors influence the occurrence of a fall in hospitalized patients. Fall risk assessment and the
implementation of fall prevention strategies are both effective strategies in the clinical area to identify and decrease
the probability of a fall. The presence of the RN is significant in fall prevention inmedical–surgical patients.