Falls risk prediction tools for hospital inpatients : do they work?

A fall is the most reported safety incident in inpatients and occurs in all adult clinical areas. There is growing interest in prevention strategies and, as part of this, in risk assessment tools. These may be useful if the aim is to flag up common risk factors or causes of falls and prompt interventions that are actually delivered. Tools that claim to predict patients' risk of falling as 'high' or 'low' do not work well and may provide false reassurance that 'something is being done'. Falls prevention should focus on a wider range of actions at the level of patients and across organisations.