The primary purpose of this Master’s Thesis research project is to identify hospitalized inpatient populations that are at highest risk for a fall. Secondarily, the project is to suggest recommendations from a Clinical Engineering perspective to decrease the number of falls that occur and to decrease the severity of the falls that do occur. Research suggests falls that occur in hospitals are due to multiple factors, and no single intervention has been shown to reduce the number of falls that occur (Higashi et al., 2005). Factors include:​ impaired balance/gait deficit, elimination needs, age, gender, history of falls, time and location, medications, mental health, and patient-to-nurse ratio (Schwendimann et al., 2005).

A case-controlled study of hospitalized patients who fell was conducted at a Midwest Tertiary Care Hospital. The hospital has a patient fall database (QASystems) that is comprised of in-patients that have fallen during their inpatient hospitalization. Data collection was done so with the utmost respect for the confidentiality and privacy of the patients in the study. Data collected was entered in to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and statistically analyzed with the use of Microsoft Excel’s add-in MegaStat.

Factors including patient’s age, primary diagnosis, medications, location, and time of day were shown to increase a patient’s risk of falling in this study. While the results of this study show that there are certain risk factors associated with patient falls, there was no single factor associated with all of the falls. Risk assessment tools should include:​ mobility of patient, elimination needs, mental status, age, history of falling, medications, primary diagnosis, and activity restriction. Prevention programs should include environmental modification, general safety, identification of high risk patients, education programs, exercise programs, injury reduction modifications, and the use of volunteers.