Falls among hospitalized patients

Abstract

This article presents a review of the main causes of falls among hospitalized patients, a global, cost-effective phenomenon with many complications for patients and institutions alike, with the objective of looking into fall prevention. Reviewing articles from various databases we look into data from articles with positive outcomes, published in English. Following an analysis of the main factors of in-hospital falls -intrinsic, extrinsic and exposure to risk-, we present a concise analysis of the existing fall prevention studies, focusing on the most popular risk assessing tools which seem to lead to the best results when used in combination with an integral approach from and proper communication between the patient, the family, the institution and the health-care teams.