Retrospective analysis of falls in selected hospitals of the Czech Republic.

INTRODUCTION: Hospitals strive, over the long term, to reduce the incidence of falls of hospitalized patients. Falls are monitored, analyzed, and regularly evaluated and corrective and preventive actions are established based on the findings. To establish preventive actions, it is essential to determine the circumstances under which the patient fell and in what type of health care facility.

OBJECTIVES: The goal of the study consisted in retrospectively analyzing falls in selected hospitals of the South Bohemian Region in 2014 and 2015.

METHODS: Our retrospective analysis of 1101 patient falls was reported by the health care staff from 4 hospitals of the South Bohemian Region. The data from the reported incidents (i.e., falls) from individual hospitals were encoded and entered in a database using the SASD statistical program and subsequently subjected to statistical analysis.

RESULTS: The highest frequency of falls was found on internal wards, 565 (51.3%) with the second highest frequency found on subsequent care wards, 267 (24.3%). The study showed that the risk of falls increases with patient age; more than 60% the hospitals, in the monitored period, involved patients over 70 years of age. Falls occurred most frequently in patient rooms and in bathrooms. Statistically significant relationships were identified between the type of ward and the time of the fall, between the type of the ward and the location of the fall, between patient age and the time of the fall, between patient age and the location of the fall, between the time of fall and the location of fall, and between the location of fall and the patient mobility before the fall.

CONCLUSION: Intensive monitoring of patient falls and the circumstances under which the falls occurred are needed to fully understand the epidemiology of hospital falls.