Nursing Homes Study of Fall Risk Assessment Oriented to Intervention

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Accidental Falls; Activities of Daily Living; Quality of Life; Self-Efficacy
• Interventions: Other: Fall risk assessment; Other: Tailored intervention

• Registration Number: NCT00888953
• Lead Sponsor: Fundacio Salut i Envelliment UAB

Brief Summary

The aim of the study is to establish the impact of a falls screening questionnaire in the adoption of preventive interventions and eventually in the reduction of falls and its consequences in elder people living in nursing homes.

Detailed Description

Falls are the most frequent accidents in nursing homes, affecting more than a third of residents each year. Up to 10% of fallers require hospitalization or suffer a fracture. Psychological consequences affects between 20 and 80% of fallers, which suffer a lack of self-confidence that leads to reduction of activities and an increase of the dependence in activities of daily living.

Not all the residents have the same risk, and each person can have more than one risk factor that can be identified (previous falls, self confidence, weakness, gait disorders, dizziness, cognitive impairment, etc).

Identification of risk factors is the first step to reduce falls, but is not enough by itself. For this reason, interventions directed towards the correction of identified risk factors are required. In this setting, multifactorial interventions are the most successful to reduce falls numbers and its consequences.

As individual randomization of residents presents important inconveniences (group contamination, control arm residents could felt discriminated), we will randomized nursing homes to each group.

Study Timeline

• Study First Submitted: 2009-04-27
• Study First Submitted QC: 2009-04-27
• Study First Posted: 2009-04-28
• Study Start: 2009-05
• Primary Completion: 2012-04
• Study Completion: 2012-04
• Status Verified: 2013-06
• Last Update Submitted: 2013-06-12
• Last Update Posted: 2013-06-13

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 331

Inclusion Criteria

• People with or without cognitive impairment living indefinitely in a nursing home place
• Able to walk with or without any kind of help or able to self transfer (as defined in category d420 of the WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health) without help
• Give their consent (or the legal guardian in case of cognitive impairment).

Exclusion Criteria

• Terminal illness (expected death before 6 months).
• Occupying temporarily a nursing home place (convalescence period) or another kind of place(day center, long term care, etc).

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Control	Fall risk assessment	Residents living in nursing homes allocated to control group. Assessment of risk factors. Receive the usual attention.
Intervention	Fall risk assessment	Residents living in nursing homes allocated to intervention group. Assessment of risk factors. Implementation of a multifactorial tailored program to prevent falls.
Intervention	Tailored intervention	Residents living in nursing homes allocated to intervention group. Assessment of risk factors. Implementation of a multifactorial tailored program to prevent falls.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Number of fallers	one year	People who at least have one fall during the follow-up period. Fall:unexpected event in which the participants come to rest on the ground, floor, or lower level

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Number of falls	one year	Number of falls per person/time.
Number of people who has a fracture as a consequence of a fall	one year
Quality of life (only in residents without cognitive impairment).	One year
Activities of daily living	One year

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Fundació Institut Català de l'Envelliment.; 🇪🇸 Barcelona, Spain