Is a slip off a chair or off the side of the bed onto the floor a fall? Is a ‘controlled lowering’ by a staff member of a resident to the floor a fall?
When recording adverse events such as falls, it’s important for the purposes of consistent reporting and bench-marking that the same definition is used to define a ‘fall’. We suggest using the definition provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) which states “A fall is defined as an event which results in a person coming to rest inadvertently on the ground or floor or other lower level.” The WHO falls prevention guidelines also report that “Globally, falls are a major public health problem. An estimated 424 000 fatal falls occur each year, making it the second leading cause of unintentional injury death, after road traffic injuries.”
Working in aged care related services means you are interacting on a daily basis with those in the high risk category for falls. WHO also report for example, in the United States of America, 20–30% of older people who fall suffer moderate to severe injuries such as bruises, hip fractures, or head traumas. The Health Quality and Safety Commission New Zealand report “for every fall in hospital, there are five in aged residential care and another 40 at home and in the community. Between 2010 and 2012, a total of 200 people fell while in hospital care and broke their hips.”
The HCSL QA online bench-marking includes tracking of falls and falls related injuries so educating your staff to become familiar with the definition is important in ensuring data collected is accurate. Accurate data measurements also allow you to be aware of your start point for quality improvement projects which can then be measured at the end of a project to measure the degree of improvement.
In answer to the questions posed at the start of this article, if we apply the WHO definition, then both should be classified as falls. For those of you using the HCSL policy and procedure system, refer to the Falls Prevention Programme (document CS19) for more information on falls prevention.