Factors Influencing Inpatient Falls

This study uses the medical incident reporting system in a regional teaching hospital in central Taiwan to analyze critical factors influencing inpatient falls in terms of people, event, time, and place. The research intends to explore how inpatient falls will occur and the impact of the degree of injury after falls, which can become a reference for the prevention of falls events in the future. The data with 374 transactions from 2016 to 2018 in this case regional teaching hospital from the medical incident reporting system were used. This study uses the following variables including age, gender, division, companions, people involved in the event, factors of falls, injuries after falls, night shifts, and places of falls. Apriori algorithm was applied to generate 32 rules which can be further organized into eleven general rules. The parameters of lift, confidence, and support are set to greater than 1, 80%, and 5%, respectively. Based on these 11 generalized rules, the results of the study showed that the inpatient falls occurs in the day shift, males between ages of 21 and 35, with companions or physical therapists with no harm to the patient. The relevant factors of falls are the physiology and behavior of the patient, and the severity is 4. The falls occurs at the age of 65 and above female patients with companions or nurses, indicating that the presence of a companion or caregiver does not mean that the patient is absolutely safe. The patient who falls in the division of general medicine is injured. The related factors are the physiology and behavior of the patient. The falls is in the general ward and in the night shift, and the severity is 4. The falls occurs in male patients between ages of 21 and 35 and have no companion. The related factors of falls are the environment and the physiology and behavior of the patients. The locations are in the general ward and the time is in the day shift.