Age and ageing
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Comparative Study
Falls prevention in hospitals and mental health units: an extended evaluation of the FallSafe quality improvement project.
inpatient falls are a major patient safety issue causing distress, injury and death. Systematic review suggests multifactorial assessment and intervention can reduce falls by 20-30%, but large-scale studies of implementation are few. This paper describes an extended evaluation of the FallSafe quality improvement project, which presented key components of multifactorial assessment and intervention as a care bundle. ⋯ : introducing evidence-based care bundles of multifactorial assessment and intervention using a quality improvement approach resulted in improved delivery of multifactorial assessment and intervention and significant reductions in fall rates, but not in injurious fall rates.
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to evaluate the performance of the 4 'A's Test (4AT) in screening for delirium in older patients. The 4AT is a new test for rapid screening of delirium in routine clinical practice. ⋯ the 4AT is a sensitive and specific method of screening for delirium in hospitalised older people. Its brevity and simplicity support its use in routine clinical practice.