Journal of the American Medical Directors Association
JAMDA OnlineOriginal StudyEpidemiology of Falls in Residential Aged Care: Analysis of More Than 70,000 Falls From Residents of Bavarian Nursing Homes
Section snippets
Methods
Bavaria is a federal state with 12.5 million inhabitants in the south of Germany. In Bavaria, more than 12% of the 551,000 citizens aged 80 years or older are residents of one of about 1400 nursing homes. Persons live in a nursing home of their own choice. In 2007, Germany's largest health insurance company (AOK) started to implement a statewide fall prevention program (The Bavarian Fall and Fracture Prevention Study) in nursing homes in Bavaria.
Participating nursing homes committed to document
Results
Falls were documented over one calendar year in 528 nursing homes with a median of 88 beds. The estimated person-years of exposure were 33,503 years in women and 9340 years in men. The distribution over different age groups and in different levels of care is shown in Table 1.
The fall rate was higher in men (2.18 falls per person-year) than in women (1.49 falls per person-year) (Table 2). The pattern of the age-dependent fall rate differed between the genders. In women, fall rates decreased
Discussion
The study presents detailed descriptive data about falls and fall rates in nursing homes. We found lower fall rates in women than in men and decreasing fall rates with increasing care need (level of care). Prevalence of falls peaked in the morning between 10 am and midday and in the afternoon and the early evening between 2 pm and 8 pm. Most of the falls occurred in the residents' rooms and only less than a quarter were observed in the homes' common areas. Residents with less functional
Acknowledgments
We thank Regina Merk-Bäuml, Ralf Brum, Markus Gindl, and Stefanie Büttner from the Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse (AOK), and Ulrich Rissmann from the Robert-Bosch-Hospital Stuttgart. Furthermore, we thank Andrea Kleiner from the Institute of Epidemiology and Medical Biometry, Ulm University, for the preparation of the figures.
References (24)
- et al.
Fall prevention in nursing homes
Clin Geriatr Med
(2010) - et al.
Falls in the nursing home setting: Does time matter?
J Am Med Dir Assoc
(2008) - et al.
Falls among elderly nursing home residents
Public Health
(1993) - et al.
Falls in the nursing home
Ann Intern Med
(1994) Falls in older people: Epidemiology, risk factors and strategies for prevention
Age Ageing
(2006)- et al.
Incidence of falls and fall-related outcomes among people in aged-care facilities in the Lower Hunter region, NSW
N S W Public Health Bull
(2008) - et al.
Falls in German in-patients and residents over 65 years of age
J Clin Nurs
(2007) - et al.
Falls among frail older people in residential care
Scand J Public Health
(2002) - et al.
Incidence and costs of falls and fall injuries among elderly in institutional care
Scand J Prim Health Care
(2002) - et al.
Fall and injury prevention in older people living in residential care facilities. A cluster randomized trial
Ann Intern Med
(2002)
Effectiveness of a multifaceted intervention on falls in nursing home residents
J Am Geriatr Soc
Fall prevention in residential care: A cluster, randomized, controlled trial
J Am Geriatr Soc
Cited by (0)
The evaluation of the study was funded by the Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forshung (Forderkennzeichen: 01EL0702, 01EL0717, 01EL0718). All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.