Fall prevention in nursing homes: documented effectiveness, prevailing views and current practices

The overarching aim of this dissertation is to improve fall prevention in nursing homes. This resulted in three overall objectives: 1) to study the documented effectiveness of fall prevention in nursing homes, 2) to gain insight into prevailing views and current practices and 3) to evaluate the feasibility of implementing a fall prevention practice guideline into the daily practice of nursing homes. Therefore, the follonwing research questions were formulated:

RQ 1: What is the currently available evidence on characteristics and effectiveness of single, multiple, and multifactorial fall prevention strategies for older persons admitted to nursing homes?

RQ 2: What is the predictive accuracy of the following fall risk screening methods to predict falls in nursing homes: the ‘Algorithm for classification of fall risk’, the ‘Care Home Falls Screen’ and healthcare workers’ clinical judgment?

RQ 3: Which fall prevention strategies are currently used by different healthcare workers in Flemish nursing homes?

RQ 4: Which variables predict whether or not healthcare workers perform fall prevention strategies?

RQ 5: Which barriers and facilitators influence the implementation of fall prevention in residential care facilities?

RQ 6: How feasible is a multifactorial strategy for fall prevention that is designed to implement a clinical practice guideline for fall prevention into the daily practice of nursing homes?